I have, and will continue to buy refurbished items where practical.

Electronics have a known failure curve. If a component is going to fail, if will either do so at the beginning of the item's life (within the first 60 days or so) or at the end of the item's planned life, normally a function of years. Failures between these points DO happen, however they are outside the norm.

Normally, refurbished items are items that have had a failure within the first few weeks of life, are sent back to the manufacturer, and repaired. They have already had a failure, and the manufacturer will probably QC each item out of the repair/refurb shop, as opposed to doing QC check on a % of items off of the assembly line.