Sell it if it’s still worth money, give it to someone if it works and isn’t, keep it if you’ll use it as a spare, and recycle it if it’s too old for any of those. The processor decides most of this, so find out which one you’ve got before anything else. Whichever you choose, wipe it before it leaves your hands.
Sell it, if the processor is new enough
We pay properly for Windows laptops with an Intel Core processor from the 8th generation onwards, or an AMD Ryzen, because those are the laptops we can sell on; a 6th or 7th generation still gets a price, just a small one. Broken ones count: a laptop with a cracked screen, a dead keyboard or no life in it at all still gets a price from us, graded as Faulty.
Some figures for an HP with a 15-inch or larger screen, as we’d pay them today:
- Core i5, 8th generation, Excellent: £70
- Ryzen 5 4000 or 5000 series, Excellent: £65
- Core i5, 12th generation, Excellent: £150
- Core i5, 12th generation, Faulty: £60
A Dell, Lenovo or Asus with the same processor gets the same. That last line is a laptop with a problem, and it still pays. If you’re not sure which processor you have, our spec guide shows where Windows lists it, and how much your laptop is worth covers the rest of what sets the price (the brand, the condition, and whether the screen’s 15 inches or more, since smaller ones pay less). When you’re ready, you can sell a laptop online with us: a quote over £20 gets a free DPD collection on the weekday you pick, and the driver brings a box. Quotes of £10 to £20 go to a DPD shop drop-off instead, and below £10 you post it yourself. When it arrives we check it against the condition you chose, and if it’s worse you get a revised offer before we do anything; turn it down and we send it back at our cost.
Pass it on to family, a school or a charity
A laptop that works but has little resale value can still be somebody’s first computer. A relative who only needs email and a browser, a child doing homework, a neighbour who’s been managing on a phone. Give the charger with it, and give it wiped, so they start from a clean setup screen and don’t have to sign out of your accounts for you.
Check what it’ll run before you hand it over. A laptop older than the 8th generation can’t officially run Windows 11, and Windows 10 lost support on 14 October 2025, so the person you give it to would be going online with a computer that no longer gets security fixes. For someone who’ll use it offline, for typing or for a child’s games, that matters less.
Schools and charities are a different case. Ask before you turn up with it: they have to be able to support whatever they accept, which can rule out anything that won’t run Windows 11.
Keep it as a spare
Reasonable, if it’ll get used, and a spare that can’t run Windows 11 is fine for jobs that never go online. A spare for guests, for the kitchen, for a trip where you’d rather not take the good one. We’d only say this: if it’s new enough to sell and you haven’t opened it in a year, it’s lost value sitting there, because every new processor generation pushes the older ones further down what they fetch.
If you do keep it, charge it every few months. A lithium-ion battery left completely flat for a long time can refuse to take a charge again, and then your spare is a laptop that only works plugged in, which we’d have to grade as Faulty if you ever changed your mind and sold it.
Recycle it if it’s too old
A laptop with a Celeron or Pentium processor, or any of the first five generations of Intel Core, is worth next to nothing to us whether it works or not, and we’ll say so. For those, recycling is the honest answer, and there’s no shortage of places to do it.
- Not the household bin. Electricals carry the crossed-out wheelie bin symbol, which means they mustn’t go in with the general rubbish.
- Your council recycling centre takes small electricals, laptops included.
- The shop you buy a replacement from. Shops that sell electricals have to offer to take back your old item when you buy a new equivalent.
- A swollen battery is a hazard. If the case bulges or the trackpad has started lifting, stop charging it, and tell the staff at the recycling centre when you hand it in.
- Take the charger too. It’s an electrical in its own right and goes in the same place.
- A drop-off point near you. Recycle Your Electricals has a postcode search that lists them.
You can also send it to us. Whatever we can’t reuse, we recycle, and our page on how to recycle an old laptop explains how that works. If you’re clearing a business’s IT rather than one laptop, our IT disposal company, Recycle Your Tec, runs free collections for businesses.
Before it goes anywhere
Wipe it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s going to us, to your nephew or into a cage at the tip; your files, saved passwords and email are still on the drive until something overwrites them, and a Windows reset with the cleaning option switched on does that without anything to install. Our guide on how to wipe a laptop has the steps for Windows 11 and Windows 10.
