Keep Above
Repair or replace the laptop
A laptop with a failing battery, screen or keyboard can usually be repaired — this page counts what that would cost over the extra years you'd expect from it, against a replacement over the years it would last. The cost per year is the figure the two sides share. No winner is declared; the estimates are yours and so is the call.
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Comes off the replacement
Put in what the fix would cost and what a replacement would cost. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Repairing | Replacing | |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | — | — |
| Running costs over its life | — | — |
| Total over its life | — | — |
| How long that covers | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a month | — | — |
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
About this calculator
What counts as the repair cost for a laptop?
The full price of the fix — a battery, screen, keyboard or board, plus the labour, and the assessment where that's charged separately. The cost per year divides the whole amount by the extra years you expect the repair to buy.
What goes into running costs a year here?
Anything it would take to keep each machine working per year — out-of-warranty repairs you'd expect, a battery partway through, software that only one side would need. Left at $0, a box simply isn't counted and the comparison rests on the up-front figures.
What is the matching time?
The number of years the repair would have to carry the laptop for its cost per year to match the replacement's — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more. When running the old one already costs more each year than the whole replacement does all-up, no length of time would match, and the page says so.
What about selling the old one?
Whatever the old laptop would fetch — a sale, a trade-in on the new one, or parts — comes off the replacement's cost. The up-front figure can't go below zero, but the lifetime total can: an old machine worth more than the replacement genuinely pulls it down.