NEW: Spend Avios on Apple products via the new Avios Shop – but should you?

avios.com has launched a new portal called ‘Avios Shop’ letting you spend Avios on ‘real stuff’.

For now, the shop only lets you purchase Apple products, although I assume the intention is to increase the selection as time goes on.

The website is here.

I had a dig around to see if it is worth your time and points. Annoyingly the site doesn’t show you the Avios price before checkout – you need to click all the way through.

The key thing to know is that you cannot pay for your entire order with Avios. This seems to defeat the object of launching Avios Shop, to be honest.

You will be presented several cash and points options. Here are the ones I had for purchasing an iPhone 16 Pro Max, listed at £1,599:

• 67,305 Avios to save £399.80
• 53,840 Avios to save £319.80
• 40,385 Avios to save £239.90
• 26,920 Avios to save £159.90
• 13,470 Avios to save £80

It seems there is no way to pay for the full purchase using Avios. The maximum discount you are offered is approximately 25% of the cash price.

(You will collect Avios on the cash portion of your purchase at a rate of 2 Avios per £1.)

The Avios numbers above may seem pretty arbitrary, but if you do the maths they all come out at roughly 0.59p per point.

This is above their ‘floor’ value of 0.5p which you get when you transfer Avios to Nectar points and spend them at Sainsburys, Argos etc but below many other redemption options.

It is substantially less value than you’d get redeeming for long haul business class flights, with our target Avios value pegged at 1p+.

Of course, 1p+ may not be YOUR valuation. You may be happy redeeming via Nectar or another low-value redemption, in which case using your Avios to reduce the cash price of an Apple device might be attractive.

Make sure you compare other retailers first

However, that’s not the full story. As I said, the headline cash price for an iPhone 16 Pro Max with 1TB storage on the Avios Shop website is £1,599.

Although this matches the official Apple website, this is £100-£200 higher than other ‘big name’ sites:

• Argos sells the same phone for £1,499 (permanent offer)
• Currys sells the same phone for £1,399 (permanent offer)
• John Lewis sells the same phone for £1,499 (special offer)

As you can see, if you’re happy paying entirely in cash you can save £200 by purchasing through another reputable retailer. That pushes the overall Avios ‘saving’ even lower.

Why spend 40,385 Avios for a £240 ‘saving’ when you can just buy the same phone at Currys for £200 less? It makes using Avios to reduce the cost of the purchase hugely unattractive.

Of course, not all Apple products are discounted as regularly. A quick search for AirPods Max online shows that the Avios Shop is price competitive with the Apple Store, John Lewis, Amazon and Currys.

In that scenario, using your Avios to reduce the cash price by 0.59p per point is a better option, although still below our target redemption value.

The bottom line is that you should benchmark the cash price offered by the Avios Shop against other retailers based on the device you want to buy.

Conclusion

Avios is rolling out a new shopping portal called Avios Shop where you can use your Avios to reduce the cash price of selected physical products.

For now, it is limited to Apple devices with a maximum 25% discount available. The ‘pence per point’ calculation is not particularly good, at 0.59p per Avios, which is substantially below high value redemptions such as premium cabin flights.

However, as with Nectar transfers, you may prefer being able to cash out your Avios immediately over the option to save for a higher value redemption. The choice is yours.

The Avios Shop website is here.