Review contents
A better way of owning a phone, iPad or MacBook, by not owning it at all? It kind of works. You get the best devices and for cheaper, and with no hassle trying to sell it or trade it in after. We're big fans.
Phones, iPads, and MacBooks. They’ve got them all. But what exactly is Raylo and how does it work?
Let’s take phones, you can get a top of the range new phone, like an iPhone 14 or a Galaxy A53, and get it for way cheaper than buying it the traditional way – it’s all done via a monthly subscription instead.
Could it be as simple as that?
The devil is always in the detail with these types of things...
With Raylo you subscribe instead of buying it outright – you get full use of the phone, tablet or laptop, and then when the subscription is up, either hand it back, get a brand new one or keep it.
It’s a lot cheaper than the traditional way of buying a device for yourself. Let’s imagine a typical phone contract, you pay a monthly fee, which is fairly large for a brand new top of the range phone, around £60 per month, some of that goes towards the ‘air time’, i.e. your minutes, data, and the fun stuff, and the rest of it goes towards paying off the phone – quite a lot of it actually.
With the phone networks, O2, vodafone, EE, etc, you are buying the phone on credit, basically a loan, and you pay them back each month to pay off the phone.
With Raylo, there’s no credit or loan agreement for the phone. All you do is pay a monthly subscription to use the phone and then pay for your air time separately (more on this later).
That’s how they can bring the costs you pay right down, so that £60 per month now becomes £30 per month (check our example below for real prices). Make sense? Plus we've got a deal for our readers (that's you!) to get a free £30 Amazon voucher¹ too.
Here's a £30 Amazon voucher for free when you buy.
You choose either 1, 2 or 3 years (depending on the device), so very similar to a normal phone contract, but then at the end of the contract, all you simply do is hand it back to Raylo, in a prepaid package, and they’ll give you a brand new device again for 1, 2 or 3 years, and the cycle repeats.
Better yet, instead of your old devices sitting around in a drawer, thrown out, or trying to sell it for a few quid, you just hand it back after you’re finished with it, it’s then wiped and refurbished and can be used by another customer for a cheaper rate rather than discarded. It’s all very green and great for the environment.
Nuts About Money tip: you could also get a refurbished device from Raylo yourself and save even more pennies.
However it gets better, handing the device back isn’t your only option! At the end of your ‘term’, the 1, 2 or 3 years you signed up for, you have three options:
1. Upgrade: get the latest new device, brand new, and continue your subscription.
2. Keep the phone: you can pay a ‘non-return fee’ and simply keep the device! Just as you would with a normal phone contract, it’s yours to do with whatever you like. Fees depend on the phone, but you’re currently looking at £199 for an iPhone 12.
3. Cancel: you can simply hand the phone back and walk away.
Phones, tablets and laptops. All the tech you really need. Let’s run through each:
You can get all the latest phones, pretty much as soon as they’re launched, including both Apple and Samsung.
And there’s a great range of refurbished phones too, with prices as low as just £12.99 per month.
Check the Raylo website to see the latest models available.
You can get all the latest tablets, with a wide range of Apple iPads, and Samsung Galaxy Tabs.
Check the Raylo website to see the latest models available.
And you guessed it, there’s a wide range of the latest laptops too – pretty much the full range of the latest MacBooks, and even refurbished ones (for a lower price).
Check the Raylo website to see the latest models available.
Yep, you can even get AirPods!
Raylo give you the handset, but they aren’t a phone network. All phones are unlocked of course, but you’ll need to get a sim card for calls, texts, data etc. All the normal phone stuff.
The good thing is, this is actually the cheaper bit, you pay the networks more for the phone rather than the actual airtime! And a cheap sim is super easy to get, you just order it from a network's website, Raylo even tell you what the best ones to get are. Job done.
Let’s say we want an iPhone 12, for 24 months and want a fair bit of data for all that TikTok-ing...
From O2, we’d be charged £30 up front (who knows why?) and then £58.05 per month(!) in total with airtime of 15GB data.
If we used Raylo we’d pay nothing up front, and then £27.99 per month for the phone, and then let’s pick a sim card from O2 which has 12GB data, which is £12 per month. So that’s £39.99 per month.
So with O2 directly, we’d be paying £58.05 per month, plus £30 one-off fee.
With Raylo, we’d be paying £39.99 per month (plus they’ll give you £30, more on that later).
That’s a monthly saving of £18.06 per month for using Raylo. Not bad at all.
So after 24 months, you would have paid:
O2 - £1,393.20
Raylo - £959.76
That’s a pretty big saving of £433.44 over 24 months. But you’re thinking, well you don’t keep the phone with Raylo? Let’s get into that.
With O2, you’d keep the phone, and at this point it’s 2 years old, but with Raylo, you would either hand the phone back and get the latest new one, or you could pay £199.99 to keep an iPhone 13, so let’s add that on to get £1,159.75 total cost with Raylo – still a saving of £233.45.
So with Raylo you pay less each month, and if you wanted to keep the phone you’d also pay less in total. Have we been getting conned by phone networks all this time? Believe it or not, sending a text message used to cost 50p… so we’ll let you make up your own mind.
Add your friends and family: you can actually add devices to your plan if you’d like to get a device for your a friend or family member, normally at a discount too.
Free case and screen protector: you don’t just get the phone, you get a top of the range phone case too, that’s super nice to hold and environmentally friendly, plus a screen protector.
🙋♂️Customer service: good customer service from a phone company? Surely not? Actually yeah! With the live-chat feature on the website you can actually speak to someone whenever you want without waiting on hold for hours. And there’s no hidden agenda to get you to upgrade your phone as there normally is with the phone networks. It’s not revolutionary, but it works, plus there’s a help centre with everything you’d want to ask too. And you’ve still got the phone number and email if you prefer.
Credit checks: there will be a credit check when you apply as you’ll be making monthly repayments, so Raylo need to know you can afford them.
You have 30 days to cancel: if you change your mind after you go ahead, you’ve got 30 days to change your mind and cancel.
🌱 They’re pretty green: leasing your device is pretty green as they’ll be reused after you’re done with them. And, the packaging is plant-based, deliveries are by electric vehicles and they support environmental charities.
Warranty: the devices are of course covered by a warranty, which means if the device itself goes wrong it will be taken care of. More than likely, you’ll just get a new one.
Insurance: you can get insurance too, and it’s pretty comprehensive, with cover against your device getting lost, stolen or damaged, and it’s worldwide. For a phone, it’s only £4.99 per month. The excess (what you’ll pay to claim) is £89 for accidental damage and £125 for theft.
🏎 It’s next day delivery: everyone gets excited when ordering their new phone don’t they? It’s like Christmas is coming. Raylo get this and send it to you as fast as possible! Free of course. Is that a reason to pretend it’s Christmas Eve once you order?
It’s got a pretty damn good rating on Trustpilot. It’s rated excellent, 4.5/5, from over 5,400 reviews.
We love reading reviews where people give a tiny bit of insight into their life too, here’s one of our favourites:
“I have never found the process a new phone so straightforward. Within days of visiting the Raylo site, I now have the latest iphone which arrived fully insured with a free high quality cover and screen protector... and I also received a £30 shopping voucher. If I had gone the network route, I would still be at the stage of trying to figure out a good deal and feeling very overwhelmed. Would thoroughly recommend it. I've saved so much money and time.”
Let’s run through the pros and cons of Raylo:
A brand new top of the range phone, lower monthly payments, lower cost of the phone overall if you wanted to keep it, cheap insurance, great service, free case, basically everything you’d want with the phone comes with it. Why has this never been an option before?
And you can even get an iPad and MacBook too! Way cheaper than buying it outright, and you don’t have to shell out up-front. We have completely converted.
Better yet, you don’t even have the hassle of trying to sell it or trade it in after the contract ends, you just get another brand new top of the range phone sent to you in the post.
We’re really struggling to find any negatives here. Even the whole process is also environmentally friendly, from delivery to recycling the old device. So let’s just leave it there, and give it a massive 5 stars. This really is the future of phones.
To learn more and get started, head over to the Raylo website¹.
You lucky thing. We’ve got a pretty good deal for you – a £30 Amazon voucher when you sign up! Just get started here¹, and voilà, it’s all yours. Full disclosure, we’ll get one too! Thanks! It really does help us keep this awesome website running 🤓
If you don’t fancy that, or want to learn more. Here's the Raylo website to check out. You can always come back and get the deal later.
Here's a £30 Amazon voucher for free when you buy.
Here's a £30 Amazon voucher for free when you buy.
Here's a £30 Amazon voucher for free when you buy.
Christopher Dowling combines a communications degree with over 10 years experience in the financial services industry in London – with focus on educating people on a wide range of money topics in an easy to understand way. He writes about savings, investing, pensions, mortgages, insurance, banking, loans, business finance and other money topics.
This article was written, reviewed and fact checked by the expert team at Nuts About Money. You’re in safe hands. Learn more.
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Here's a £30 Amazon voucher for free when you buy.
