A laptop lasts until one of two things happens: a part wears out and the fix isn’t worth paying for, or the software it needs stops supporting it. We won’t put a number of years on it. The same model can be finished in one owner’s bag and fine in another’s, and since October 2025 the second reason has been ending the lives of Windows laptops that still work perfectly.
The parts that wear out
The battery. Lithium-ion batteries hold less charge the more times they’re charged and the older they get, and heat speeds that up. It’s the first thing you notice: a laptop that lasted a working day on battery ends up needing the charger by lunch, then needing it all the time. On our quote form a tired battery on its own isn’t a fault; a laptop that doesn’t charge, or won’t run without the charger plugged in, is Faulty.
Hinges. Opening the lid from one corner, every day for years, loosens them until one of them cracks the plastic it’s screwed into.
The keyboard. Keys stop registering, or register twice. Crumbs do some of it and spills do the rest, and any keyboard fault puts a laptop in Faulty for us, as does liquid damage even if everything works afterwards.
Fans. They pull dust in with the air and the dust stays. A laptop with clogged fans runs hot, sounds busy doing nothing and slows itself down to keep the temperature under control, which reads to its owner like the laptop getting old when half of it is dirt.
The screen. Backlights fade and fail, and pixels die. Both put a laptop in Faulty on our form, and so does a crack, however small.
The charger. Cables fray where they meet the plug and the brick. A charger that’s missing or broken doesn’t move a laptop down a grade with us: an Excellent one loses £10, or £75 if it’s a gaming or workstation laptop, and a Good or Faulty one loses nothing.
None of those has to end a laptop’s life. Batteries, keyboards and fans can all be replaced or cleaned, and whether that’s worth it depends on what the laptop’s worth once it’s fixed, which brings us to the thing that ages it faster than any of them.
You can slow the wear down. Use it on a desk or a tray, where the vents can breathe, and not on a duvet. Don’t leave it in a hot car. Get the fans cleaned when it starts sounding like a hairdryer, and carry it by the base with the lid shut, never by the screen.
What ages a laptop faster than wear
The processor. More exactly, the processor’s generation, and what Windows will still run on it.
Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 on 14 October 2025. Windows 11 officially needs an Intel Core processor from the 8th generation or newer, or an AMD Ryzen 2000 series or newer. So a 7th-generation Core i5 laptop in beautiful condition, with a new battery and a clean fan, is stuck on an operating system that no longer gets fixes, and a laptop you use for banking and email shouldn’t be running one of those. Nothing wore out, and it’s still reached the end. Intel’s 8th generation first went on sale in late 2017, so a Windows laptop bought new before then can’t officially make the move.
If you don’t know which generation yours is, find your processor in Windows first. The name ends in a number, and the first digit or two of that number (the 11 in i5-1135G7, for example) is the generation. Celeron and Pentium processors don’t follow that pattern, and for our purposes they sit with the oldest Core chips.
When to sell, if you’re going to
Our price falls with each generation. Here’s what we pay today for an HP with a Core i5 in Excellent condition, newest first:
- 13th generation: £180
- 12th generation: £150
- 11th generation: £115
- 10th generation: £100
- 8th generation: £70
Dell, Lenovo and Asus pay the same. Every year a newer generation comes out and the one in your drawer moves another step down that list, which is why a laptop sitting unused loses value every year even though nobody’s touched it. Below the 8th generation the price drops sharply: a 7th-generation Core i5 in Excellent condition is worth £30 to us, and by the first five Core generations, along with Celeron and Pentium machines, we’d be paying you close to nothing.
That makes the reasons to sell short:
- You’ve already replaced it. A laptop you don’t use is money going down, and the sooner it goes the more it’s worth.
- It’s 8th generation or newer. It runs Windows 11 and still has a price.
- A part’s gone and you don’t want to pay for the repair. We buy faulty laptops, including ones that won’t turn on, and a Faulty laptop with a recent processor still gets a proper price.
- You want something towards the next one. We pay by bank transfer or PayPal the same day we check it.
And a reason to wait: if it’s working, you use it every day and it’s on Windows 11, keep using it. We’d rather buy it when you’ve finished with it than talk you out of a laptop that does the job, and a year’s use is worth more to you than one step down our list.
Before it goes anywhere, work through wiping a laptop before you sell it. If yours is too old to have a price, what to do with an old laptop goes through the other options. If it’s new enough, check what your laptop is worth and sell your old laptop while it’s still near the top of the list.
