- 4numbers decide it
- 1most often omitted
Repair or Replace
No affiliate links on this site, and nothing here is ranked.
The decision is arithmetic and it is usually made on impression, in both directions — people repair devices that should be replaced and replace devices that should be repaired. For a separate workplace perspective on device availability and work records, Monitask's top remote companies provides additional context.
The four numbers
One. What the repair costs. Not a guess: manufacturers must publish indicative spare part prices on a freely accessible website (Ecodesign Regulation (EU) 2023/1670 — European requirement), and a shop will quote labour on top.
Two. What the device is worth working. Its resale value, which is checkable in ten minutes and is usually lower than owners expect. For broader repair and consumer-rights context, Lenovo is another useful reference.
Three. How long it has left. The software support date sets the outer boundary, and battery condition sets the practical one.
Four. What a replacement costs, at the specification you would actually buy rather than the one you would like.
The calculation
Repair when the cost is less than what the remaining life is worth to you.
Concretely: a repair costing a fifth of a replacement, on a device with three years of support left and a healthy battery, is clearly worth doing.
A repair costing half of a replacement, on a device with one year of support left, clearly is not.
The middle cases are decided by the remaining life, which is why the support date is the number people most often omit — and it is the one that most changes the answer.
Where intuition fails
Overvaluing the device. A three-year-old phone is worth substantially less than its owner believes, which makes expensive repairs look more justified than they are.
Undervaluing a battery replacement. The cheapest repair on the list and the one that restores the most perceived life — a device that felt old frequently feels new afterwards, and the cost is a fraction of replacement.
Treating all repairs as one decision. A battery and a screen are entirely different economics on the same device.
And the sunk cost of a previous repair, which is gone and should not enter the calculation for the next one.
What to do before deciding
Look up the published part price. Two minutes, and it converts an unknown into a number.
Check the support date, which is published for devices under the EU rules and findable for most others.
Get one quote, and make it comparable by asking for parts and labour separately.
And establish what is actually wrong, since some failures are not failures — a full storage drive and a dirty port both present as a device that needs replacing.
The case for repairing anyway
Where the arithmetic is close, repair.
The replacement carries costs the calculation misses: setting it up, moving data, accessories that no longer fit, and the risk that the new device is worse in some way you have not discovered.
And the environmental argument is real without being the point of this page — the manufacturing footprint of a device dominates its lifetime impact, which means keeping one longer is the largest single thing an individual owner controls.
The device that is not worth repairing and not ready to replace
A common position and it has a third answer.
Use it until something else fails, having decided in advance that the next fault ends it.
That decision is worth making explicitly rather than drifting, because it changes what you do in the meantime: no further spending on it, no accessories that only fit it, and a plan for the data so that a sudden failure is not also a loss.
And it removes the pressure from the eventual moment, which is when people buy badly.
Timing a replacement
Two things move the decision by months.
The support date, which sets a boundary you can plan toward rather than meet by surprise.
And the battery, because a replacement battery buys a year or two at a small cost — which is frequently the better move than replacing the device this year, particularly if you would rather buy next year for other reasons.
Neither is available to somebody deciding in a shop with a broken phone, which is the argument for making the decision before the moment arrives.
Where the answer is neither
Some faults are not worth diagnosing.
A device that has been under water, that has an intermittent fault nobody can reproduce, or that has already had two unrelated failures is a device where further money is a gamble rather than a repair.
Say so plainly to yourself rather than continuing to spend in small increments — which is how people end up having paid most of a replacement in pieces.
The quote that changes the answer
Ask what happens if the repair does not fix it.
A device with an intermittent fault may need a second part, and a shop that will diagnose before committing you to a cost is different from one that replaces a component and charges regardless.
Ask two questions before authorising: what happens if this does not resolve it, and is the first part's cost credited toward the second.
The answers vary, they are reasonable either way, and knowing them beforehand is what prevents a repair becoming an escalating series.
Insurance, briefly
Where a device is insured, the calculation changes and not always in favour of claiming.
An excess plus the effect on future premiums can exceed the repair cost, particularly for a screen — which is the most commonly claimed and most commonly cheaper to pay for directly.
Work out the excess against the published part price before claiming, which takes the same two minutes as everything else on this page.
The short version
- Four numbers: the repair cost, the device's working value, how long it has left, and what a replacement actually costs
- Part prices are published by manufacturers under EU rules, so the repair cost is checkable before asking anybody
- The support date is the number most often omitted and the one that most changes the answer
- Intuition overvalues the device, undervalues a battery replacement, and treats different repairs as one decision
- A previous repair is a sunk cost and does not belong in the next decision
- Where the arithmetic is close, repair — the replacement carries setup, migration and risk that the calculation misses