Are Refurbished Laptops Suitable for ETH BYOD?

Introduction

Since 2024, ETH has required new students to “bring your own device” or BYOD, and by “device” they mean “laptop”. They publish recommendations for the minimum requirements for a device that they estimate would be suitable for at least 10 semesters (that’s 5 years).

Given the five-year time horizon, and presumably the assumption that they are making recommendations on brand new devices, some aspects of this seem to preclude most refurbished devices. We present here the details of the recommendations and explain each point and what the implications would be should that recommendation be adapted to encompass a refurbished option.

ETH’s Hardware Price Warning ETH includes an explicit note on their portal regarding current market conditions: "Due to rising component prices for RAM, graphics cards and SSDs, a general increase in prices as well as limited availability of laptops over the course of the year are expected."

This component cost squeeze hits brand-new retail laptops hardest. Refurbished enterprise laptops sidestep these retail price hikes, allowing students to hit ETH's target specs without paying inflated brand-new markup.

Summary of Availability

As can be seen from the summary table below, Most of the recommendations are either standard features of refurbished laptops, or highly available. There are two items worthy of further discussion, processor, and SSD capacity.

Processor Trade-offs

On the processor recommendation, as far as the Intel recommendation goes, they have chosen to recommend a processor which was released late in 2022, which means manufacturers were producing these laptops in 2023. With usual Swiss corporate rollout and upgrade cycles, those machines are not yet highly available on the refurbished laptop market. In the FAQ on the recommendations page, no further explanation is given as to why that generation is selected as the minimum recommended. 

Anecdotally, there is currently no software which the university would require a student to run which would not run on a processor even three or four generations older than that. On the refurbished market, 11th generation Intel laptops are highly available, while 12th gen have medium availability. The university  recommends the 13th generation. 

Note: The 13th gen recommendation only applies to the HS26 cohort. For HS24 and HS25, 11th and 12th gen Intel Core processors are fully compliant with the recommendations. This means that most refurbished laptops available on durubitu.ch easily meet the actual performance requirement demanded from an ETH program

SSD Storage Choices

On SSD capacity, while there are many 512 GB SSD options on the refurb market, the best deals to be had are on the 256 GB models. For anyone using cloud storage (iCloud, Google Drive, etc),,256 GB  could work well. Storage space can also be expanded with external SSD drives. Of course, it’s much nicer to have that storage built in, as we tend to accumulate things over the years.

Memory: Navigating 16 GB Baseline and Rising Component Costs

ETH sets a firm requirement of 16 GB RAM across all starting cohorts. Modern browser habits, heavy multitasking, and background tasks on Windows 11 quickly exhaust 8 GB, making 16 GB the ideal standard for a 10-semester lifespan.

ETH even cautions on their site that rising prices for RAM and SSD components are driving up the cost of new laptops this year. While brand-new 16 GB laptops are becoming noticeably more expensive, 16 GB configurations are widely available in the refurbished enterprise market at flat, budget-friendly rates. Choosing refurbished lets you meet ETH's 16 GB requirement outright without paying the current market premium on new hardware.

A Note on Durability

The recommendations are aiming for a device which will last for 10 semesters, but they have made no mention of physical durability. Devices don’t become outdated simply because something newer comes along, but often become outdated because they get broken or worn from the strain of daily use. Laptops have hinges, and keyboards, and buttons, and a casing which holds everything together. 10 semesters of university life is a lot of opening and closing and throwing in the backpack along with heavy books.

Consumer-grade laptops, that is, the models you’ll often see in the big electronics retail stores are built for, and prices for, consumers who might optimise for price, features, and appearance. But the enterprise customer prioritises reliability, durability, and serviceability. Refurbished laptops from Durubitu are of the enterprise grade variety 

Interested to hear peoples thoughts and experiences.