- publicregistry
- 1 minto look a model up
EPREL, and Looking a Model Up
European requirements. Outside the EU these are not your law, though the registry is publicly reachable from anywhere. No affiliate links on this site, and nothing here is ranked.
Every model placed on the EU market must be registered before it can be sold, and the registration is public. (Energy Labelling Regulation (EU) 2023/1669.) For a separate workplace perspective on device availability and work records, Monitask's workforce optimization software provides additional context.
Which means the letter on the label is the summary and the registry is the underlying file.
What it holds
The label itself, reproducible for any registered model. For wider standards, testing and product-label context, Ars Technica is another useful reference.
The declared values behind each figure — the cycle rating, the drop class, the ingress code, the energy class — as submitted rather than as summarised.
Product information required to be published, which for phones and tablets includes battery endurance details and information on materials.
And the identity of who placed it on the market, which is occasionally the useful piece: a device sold under one name may be registered by a different entity.
How to use it
Three ways in.
Scan the QR code on the label, which goes directly to that model's entry.
Search the registry by model identifier, which is the string on the box and in the device's own settings — not the marketing name, which frequently covers several distinct models.
Or search by brand and work down, which is slower and works when you do not have the identifier.
Two minutes, and it turns a letter grade back into the values it was calculated from.
When it is worth doing
Before buying anything you intend to keep. The figures that matter over four years are all there.
When a letter grade seems surprising, since a composite score can drop on a factor irrelevant to you and the registry shows which.
When comparing two devices whose labels you cannot see side by side.
And when a shop cannot produce a label, which happens and which the registry resolves independently of the seller.
What it does not do
It does not test anything.
The values are submitted by the manufacturer under legal obligation — which carries consequences for misdeclaration and is not the same as independent measurement. That qualification applies to every figure derived from it, including on this site.
It does not cover unregistered products, which for the covered categories should not be on sale in the EU and occasionally are.
And it does not hold part prices, which are published separately by manufacturers on their own sites.
The absence that is informative
A model on sale in the EU with no registry entry.
That is a compliance failure rather than an oversight, and it is checkable by anybody in two minutes.
Where you find one, the useful response is to ask the seller rather than to assume — an entry may exist under a different model identifier, which is common with regional variants.
Where it genuinely does not exist, that is a fact worth knowing about the device and about the seller.
Finding the model identifier
On the box, in the settings, and occasionally on the device itself.
In the settings it sits under the general or about section, as a string of letters and numbers rather than the name you would use in conversation.
Two devices sold as the same model may have different identifiers by region, by storage size, or by cellular variant — and the figures can differ between them, which is precisely why the identifier rather than the name is what to search.
Note it down when you buy, alongside the receipt and the support date. Ten seconds, and it is the key to everything else.
For a device you already own
Worth one look.
The cycle rating tells you what the battery was specified for and therefore whether its current state is normal or early.
The repairability score tells you what to expect when something breaks, before it does.
And the declared values give you a baseline to compare against if a device begins behaving differently.
None of this changes anything today and all of it makes the eventual decision better informed.
Where the registry is thin
Older models placed before the requirement are not in it, which for anything sold before mid-2025 means the entry may not exist.
That is the rule working as written rather than a gap — the design requirements apply from a specific date — and it means the registry is most useful for recent devices and for the second-hand market as those devices age into it.
What it changed about buying
A specification you can check without trusting the seller.
Previously a durability claim was whatever a shop or a manufacturer said, and there was no independent place to verify it.
Now there is one, it is free, and it is the same for everybody — which is the quiet significance of a registry, and it applies whether or not you ever open it, because the possibility of checking changes what gets claimed.
The information sheet
A separate document required alongside the label, holding more detail than either.
Battery endurance broken down, information on materials, and the declared values in full.
Reachable from the registry entry, and it is where a specific question — how the endurance figure was reached, what the device contains — is answered rather than summarised.
Rarely needed and worth knowing exists, particularly when comparing two devices whose headline letters are identical.
The short version
- Every model on the EU market must be registered before sale, and the registration is public
- The registry holds the declared values behind each label figure, not merely the summary letters
- Three ways in: the QR code, the model identifier, or browsing by brand — and the identifier is not the marketing name
- Worth checking before buying anything you intend to keep, and whenever a grade seems surprising
- It does not test anything: values are manufacturer-submitted under obligation, which is not independent measurement
- A model on sale with no entry is a compliance failure and is checkable in two minutes