Very much as it says anyone any recommendations for decent laptop battery suppliers?.
Seen prices for the one i want from 12 odd quid to 108! Must be a decent price performance medium in there somewhere, so any suppliers recommended please?
Cheers..
It's a crapshoot, since many of them are fake and die after a short while. Can you buy an official one from the manufacturer direct? A lot of the online battery vendors are actually fronts for Chinese companies, dressed up as UK sellers (so good luck with returns).
If the battery is thick (ie it's not a flat pouch cell like phones) it probably contains 18650 cells. I'd be tempted to consider re-celling the battery with decent brand 18650s (Samsung, Panasonic, LG, Sony), since at least you know where they came from.
Theo
The HP laptop is probably made in China with Chinese sourced batteries.
Avoid any battery that claims to have greater capacity than the original.
HP battery test and calibration - see the video on the following page.
Indeed, almost all lithium batteries are made in China. The distinction is between branded batteries which have a well-controlled chemistry and last for 1000 cycles, and poor construction/chemistry that last for 200 cycles. Or fakes (rejects, bad materials, poorly tested, etc) which last for Avoid any battery that claims to have greater capacity than the original.
...unless it's substantially larger (eg you can get 9 cell batteries that project underneath a laptop that previously took a 6 cell battery). However these can confuse the BIOS/battery management.
Agreed in general though. There's a limit to how much more you can squeeze in, and a certain tendency for 'hyperinflation' as vendors of fakes try to one-up each other - eg the '300,000mAh' power banks that are only as large as 4x 3000mAh 18650s.
Theo
Er no. It's a lot more complicated than that. There are issues like peak discharge rates and peak charge rates and self discharge rates, as well as size and weight and capacity and lifetimes.
Nope discontinued item they say now.
Humm .. the existing HP branded one was made in you know where;!..
Bloody hell theres a website for them now!.
Yes expect battery will look a mess when I've done that:(
Indeed - every manufacturer has a range of cells: a laptop is different from a power tool is different from an electric car, and there are models to suit each application. You need the right part for the job, like any other product.
That is entirely orthogonal from the fact that there are fake batteries out there, which pretend to be the real thing but don't obey the datasheet, and low quality manufacturers who don't have a datasheet in the first place. Both kinds you want to avoid.
Theo
How easy is it to use 18650 cells as replacements? Can you solder to them easily without damage, or whatever?
I just wanted to salvage the OK cells in an expired netbook battery pack as there is usually one cell letting the pack down. Getting the pack container open proved impossible without wrecking it beyond re-use.
Soldering the cells is possible if you have a powerful soldering iron so that you don't heat the cells for too long.
Frankly, it's not worth the effort.
Another Dave
Inspired by this thread I just popped a zoostorm battery pack apart to reveal the batteries. It would go together again, and took me about as long to type this as the disassembly took.
18650 is a size like AA. There are a variety of manufacturers of batteries to that size, and many sellers of those manufacturers.
I don't have any experience with buying, but a couple of reasonably priced vendors I turned up that seem to be well regarded:
('vaping' seems to be a useful source of 18650s, if you ignore the ones which are re-wrapped in artistic vinyl wraps to appeal to the vaping market)
Maybe. Just presenting it as an alternative option. (I had a netbook where third party replacements kept failing - after spending a lot of effort to find a UK seller, on the second warranty replacement I got rather fed up with low quality aftermarket batteries)
If you're buying a ready-made battery, look at the whois information on the domain. Most likely batterysomething.co.uk is actually a Chinese seller who has a UK VOIP phone number and a UK forwarding mailbox, but will ship from China and expect you return their faulty product to China too.
Theo
You wouldn't think its such a palaver buying a decent laptop battery!.
So we did a further look around and 2-power parts came up website registered to psaparts in London seems a large ish UK based supplier.
Seems that 2-power aren't that bad according a couple of reviews so in the end did a search for the larger capacity battery several suppliers came up from around 75 to 54 inc vat so went to this lot;
thelaptoppowersupplyshop.co.uk
Registered to a cottage in Welsh Wales so we'll see what becomes on that then!.
It really isn't possible to cut the battery case open and now I've got me magnifying glass from ye shed it seems the original battery, its a HP
6930P, was dated 3/2010 so way past its use by date!. Nice chunky machine goes very well with a solid state hard drive used out in the field quite a bit.So we'll see how we get on with this one then.
Thanks to all who helped:)
Yes. I have what they call a 'mod' (don't understand the jargon) which uses a single 18650, and which gives a day's use on one charge. The battery is getting on for 3 years old and still fine. Most impressive. Made by Sony. And they've come down in price recently. Now better value per mA.hr than NiMh.
After re-celling, surely the battery management IC will need re-initialising via a serial link? And it may have been 'finalised' to prevent this, unless the flash memory is removed from the board and wiped before replacing?
I investigated an old HP laptop in which I had replaced the battery. Probably not a good one as after the first charge it failed. The supplier replaced it suspiciously quickly without question, but the second one only lasted a couple of years.
After it would only hold a small charge, I tried reprogramming the chip and got a bit more life from the battery. I did this a second time but fell into the trap of setting a lccking flag which I was surprised to find was unset by the manufacturer, but this prevented it from being unlocked again.
It depends on the battery - the management IC may store parameters in SRAM, so they're cleared when you disconnect the cells. Or it may provide a means to reset it. You should check this up before ordering replacement cells. (the chip may well be a standard one from TI etc)
That seems to be a not-uncommon aftermarket battery experience :(
Theo
In article , tony sayer scribeth thus
So said battery has turned up via DHL from an address in London i think its where 2-power are based. Well packed lots of info sheets and safety information and charging and use info. Has a few stickers quoting the original HP/Compaq part number on the battery and box.
Decided to get the 9 cell higher capacity version which did exist its just that HP don't make them or the 6 cell anymore. It does look very original and on the box says celled with Samsung batteries. Anyway has charged up and we'll see if it does do the claimed discharge times and as to longevity we'll see about that in a whiles time but all good thus far!.
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