Is Aldi's $469 iPhone a good deal?

Aldi is selling the iPhone 6S for $469. (Image: Yahoo Finance screenshot)

Discount supermarket chain Aldi will be selling Apple iPhones for $469 as a one-off special on Wednesday.

The refurbished handsets are the iPhone 6S 64GB, which is a model Apple first released brand new in 2015.

Aldi’s twice-weekly specials have a reputation for good value. When certain popular items have come in, customers have known to queue outside the supermarket door long before it opens that morning.

But is this iPhone a good price at $469?

Before we compare, the first thing to note is that Aldi’s iPhone is a refurbished product — meaning it is second-hand.

The sale of refurbished smartphones have become commonplace in the Australian market, especially in recent years when premium handsets have exceeded $1000 and even $1500 as brand new products.

Refurbished Aldi vs brand new Kogan

Australian online retailer Kogan has brand new iPhone 6S phones for $549 plus delivery, which costs $20 to have it sent to the Yahoo Finance office in central Sydney.

So it’s $100 more expensive to get a new phone compared to a second-hand Aldi.

Brand new iPhone 6S at Kogan. (Image: Yahoo Finance screenshot)

However, this brand new iPhone 6S from Kogan features 32GB storage — only half the amount offered with Aldi’s second-hand units. If you’re always running out of room for photos and apps on your smartphone then this will be important.

Refurbished Aldi vs refurbished Kogan

Kogan also offers refurbished iPhone 6S with 64GB — so exactly the same as Aldi — for $349 plus delivery.

But before you curse Aldi for being $100 more expensive for the same product, Kogan notes that its phones are “B Grade factory refurbished”. This means that the handset could have “heavy signs of dents, cracks or marks”, while functionality is still guaranteed.

Compare this to Aldi’s guarantee that its second-hand iPhones have “no LCD discolorations, no screen lifting or gaps, no signs of liquid damage and only minimal scratches with a maximum length of 0.5mm or less”. Presumably this is what Kogan might call “A grade refurbished”.

So are aesthetics important to you? Is it worth $100?

Conclusion

Aldi’s refurbished iPhone 6S seems to be good value if you want a phone with minimal scratching and lots of storage.

But if you don’t care about having a big dent or would prefer the peace of mind of a brand new iPhone 6S, then there are better options at other retailers.

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