There's a cheaper way to get the best Bang & Olufsen products, with a new official Reloved service

Bang & Olufsen have introduced a new programme, Reloved, to extend the life of their iconic audio products. It's a recycling and resale programme that offers more peace of mind than typical refurbishment, and it makes B&O products more affordable for those of us who have champagne tastes but cider budgets.

With Reloved, Bang & Olufsen takes products that have been traded in and inspects them, refurbishes them with genuine Bang & Olufsen parts if required and offers them for sale with certification and a three-year warranty. That addresses a real pain point with buying expensive, complex products second-hand, especially from private sellers: buying desirable audio kit without a long warranty is risky, and I've been burnt a few times.

Three years is long for a pre-loved warranty: as a long-term buyer of refurbished everythings, I'm used to year-long warranties and often even shorter guarantees.

Reloved strikes me as similar to a luxury car firm's approved used selection: you can get the products cheaper elsewhere but if you do, buyer beware.

Will Bang & Olufsen Reloved save you money?

Reloved delivers monthly product "drops", focusing on specific products. The first drop features the Beoplay P2, Beoplay A2, Beosound Edge, Beosound 3000 and Beogram 2000. The next drop is due on 12 November.

Products are graded as Mint, Excellent or Good, photographed – so what you see is what you'll get – and priced according to their condition, so in the initial drop a Beosound 3000 in excellent condition was £2,200 (about €2,495 / AU$4,420) and one in good condition was £1,950 (about €2,213 / AU$3,918). A mint condition Beoplay A2 is currently available for £229 (about €260 / AU$460) .

It's clear that these products are available in limited quantities, so for example at the time of writing the Beosound 3000s and Beogram 2000s seem to have sold out already.

According to Bang & Olufsen, "Products are selected based on availability of authentic spare parts and contemporary relevance, ensuring each piece can continue to perform as beautifully as it was designed to."

Reloved is currently available in the UK, Norway, Switzerland and the EU. It's unclear whether the programme will be made available in other territories.