iPad Sale: Refurbished Prices Slashed for Limited Time

We commonly see retail stores discount iPads, but it’s not very often when Apple itself discounts its own refurbished models. Mark today’s sale as a rare occurrence, as the Cupertino-based company is temporarily discounting some refurbished iPad models, slashing prices to as low as $219 for a 16GB first-gen iPad mini.

That is a $30 price drop off of the normal $249 cost that you’d usually pay for a refurbished iPad mini. Furthermore, a refurbished iPad 2 takes over $249 price slot for a limited time, while a third-generation iPad and a fourth-generation iPad start at $269 and $299, respectively. Frankly, that’s a heck of a deal for a refurbished iPad.

If you’ve been thinking about getting an iPad, we’d advise you to take advantage of this deal, because it definitely won’t last long. Refurbished Apple products tend to have limited availability in the first place, so having the prices marked down will only add severity to the inventory.

We’ve already seen plenty of iPad sales this year from a plethora of retail stores, including Walmart, Best Buy and Target, where you can usually find an iPad for around $50 off the normal retail price. The number of deals that we’ve seen has drifted off slightly since the beginning of the year, and this refurbished sale from Apple definitely hits the spot.

Arguably, Apple offers some of the best refurbished products around. Most of the Apple products that I’ve bought over the years have been refurbished, including gifts to other people for Christmas or their birthday, and guess what? They never know the difference between refurbished and brand new.

Apple refurbished products are essentially just items that customers have returned in the past, sometimes due to a problem with the device or they no longer wanted it and returned in within the allowed timeframe. Whatever the case, Apple takes these products and makes them new again, by fixing the problem (if there was one), giving them a new battery and slapping on a new casing.

Refurbished hardware from Apple is so top of the line that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a refurbished iPad and a brand new one if they were side by side. This makes buying an Apple refurbished device one of the best moves you can make when you’re thinking about buying a “new” iPad.

However, when buying refurbished, you need to have a little bit of patience, because it takes a few months for newly-released Apple products to show up in the refurbished store, and even then, different models come and go, so there are times where you’ll be waiting for a specific model to become available. Patience is definitely a good virtue to have when you want to save money.

Of course, there are also other avenues that you can go down if you’re wanting to buy a cheap iPad, including checking out eBay and Craigslist, or doing it the old fashioned way and asking around — telling your friends that you’re in the market for a new iPad and want a good deal. Your friends will usually know someone who’s selling their used iPad.

Unfortunately, Apple isn’t discounting the refurbished iPad Air, but you can still grab one for as low as $419, which is an excellent price for Apple’s latest flagship tablet. However, if you’re looking to save some cash, you can’t go wrong with the iPad mini, as it’s the cheapest tablet that Apple offers, and the refurbished price makes it cheaper than the Nexus 7, which we thought we would never witness, considering that the Nexus 7 is the ultimate budget tablet, but it finally happened.