Second-hand computers in Mauritius

A refurbished laptop has been professionally tested, repaired and cleaned before resale, often with a short warranty. A second-hand one is sold as-is by its previous owner. You will find both in Mauritius: refurbished stock usually comes from resellers and retired business fleets (Dell, HP and Lenovo especially), while private sellers list their own machines. Refurbished costs a little more but carries less risk; buying privately is cheaper if you check the machine carefully before paying.

Prioritise an SSD over a hard drive (night-and-day speed), 8 GB of RAM as a minimum (16 GB for editing), and a recent processor — Intel Core i5 8th-gen or newer, or AMD Ryzen. For study and office work, integrated graphics are fine; for gaming or video, look for a dedicated GPU.

Boot it fully, check battery health and cycle count, and test every port, the keyboard, trackpad and webcam. Look for dead pixels and signs of liquid damage (corrosion, sticky keys). On Windows, confirm the licence is genuine and activated; on a MacBook, make sure it is signed out of iCloud and not Activation Locked.

Laptops dominate locally — portable, and the battery keeps you working through a power cut. Desktops give more power per rupee for gaming or heavy editing, but are rarer second-hand here and tie you to one spot. For most buyers, a good used laptop is the practical choice.