Buying a New Computer at Best Buy or Walmart? Read This First

When you buy a laptop or desktop at Best Buy or Walmart, you'll be offered a paid protection plan at checkout — Geek Squad Protection at Best Buy, or a Walmart Protection Plan (Allstate) at Walmart. We don't sell either one, so here's our honest, independent take on whether to buy it and what it actually does.

The warranty is usually worth it — especially on laptops

For a laptop, we generally say yes. These plans typically cover accidental damage — drops, spills, a cracked screen — which is the single most common way a laptop dies, and the most expensive thing to fix out of pocket. A screen or board repair can cost more than the plan did.

For a desktop tower it's less clear-cut: desktops don't get dropped or carried around, and their parts are cheaper and easier to swap. If the price is high relative to the machine, you can often skip it on a desktop.

But a warranty does not stop depreciation

Here's the part that surprises people: a computer starts losing value the day you open the box, and it keeps losing value whether or not it's "protected." A protection plan covers defects and accidents — it does not cover the machine simply getting slower as software, browsers, and operating systems demand more each year.

A computer that felt fast on day one usually starts to feel sluggish in three to five years, not because anything broke, but because the world moved on. The warranty will replace a failed part; it won't make an aging machine keep up.

What actually extends a computer's useful life

The cheapest way to make an older computer feel new again is almost always an upgrade, not a replacement. On most desktops and many laptops, adding memory (RAM) or swapping a slow hard drive for an SSD is a dramatic, inexpensive speed boost — often the difference between "time to buy a new one" and "good for two more years."

A caveat: laptop upgrades are more limited than they used to be. Many modern laptops have the memory and storage soldered to the board, so they can't be upgraded after purchase. If long-term upgradeability matters to you, that's worth checking before you buy — and it's a good question to ask us before you go to the store.

Bottom line

Get the protection plan on a laptop (accidental damage alone usually justifies it); think twice on a cheap desktop. Either way, budget for an upgrade or two over the machine's life, and plan to refresh every few years — that's normal, not a failure.

We service desktop and tower computers and swap out parts (drives, RAM, power supplies, graphics cards), and we're happy to tell you — before you buy — what to look for and what's worth upgrading later. We don't sell warranties or hardware, so the advice is independent.