Battery advice please

i saw some batteries on ebay. some of the 12 cell are rated as 8800 mAh and others are rated as 9600 mAh with the same voltage. the stock on the HP site is 8800 mAh. is it safe to buy the 9600 mAh? i'm planning to buy one. are the products on ebay reliable? please help. i need advice. thanks

 

Mixed bag. Some have reported positive experiences with aftermarket batteries sold on eBay. Others, not so much.

Though a higher capacity battery will work fine.

You may want to avoid the Chinese sellers even though many of them offer warranties. IF you had to engage that warranty, it will cost you a lot of time and money to ship it back to China. SO try to deal with someone in your country that has at least a 1 year warranty.

 

I second that advice. I have had plenty of batteries from ebay that worked fine and only one that didn't. Seller was very nice and offered a replacement or full refund. It cost $20 to send it back, which the seller said they would pay, but it got lost for 8 months. I just got it back a couple of weeks ago and contacted the seller and they send to send it back again and they would refund me the full price if the battery hadn't discharged below half and a half refund is it had plus repaying both shipping fees. Worked out okay but after a long time

 

i see. thanks for the advice. this is for my HP dv5. the battery failed on me twice already. the first one was still covered by the warranty. the replacement they sent me only lasted for 5 months.

 

I had a really strange experience with buying a 12 cell battery on eBay, from a Chinese seller. First, let me say that the seller was extremely nice, but that only made the problem tolerable.

The shipping took almost 4 weeks to get the battery from China, and when I got it, it didn't fit exactly right in my dv5t laptop. It wouldn't lock in properly, and if I moved my laptop a little too abruptly, it would actually fall out! So I had to get some heavy-duty tape to tape it in place, because if I didn't, I kept losing my connection every few minutes!

When I contacted the seller, she was very nice, and asked me to send pictures of the battery in the laptop, so she could show the manufacturer (or provider) she was working with. She said she would exchange it, but she neglected to mention the shipping cost (both ways) because it was going to be really expensive. ( The battery cost around $70, but the shipping, each way, was going to be around $25!)

After I sent the pictures, she then requested more pictures, this time to show the serial number of the battery. I tried to do so, but my camera wouldn't let me get that much of a close up, and all I got was a blur. This time she intimated that I would have to pay the shipping costs.

Bottom line -- The battery itself was fine, but it was apparently not manufactured correctly or it wasn't the right model for the dv5t. The price was great, so long as I didn't have to pay additional shipping costs. When I found out I would have to, it just wasn't worth it, so I still have the taped in battery -- because it just became too much to deal with.

I'm not sure how we can protect ourselves from this problem. I checked her reputation on eBay before I purchased, and it was excellent, with great comments. I certainly won't ever again buy from a vendor outside the US, but I probably will buy off of eBay again because the savings is substantial!

 

@imperfect1

hows the battery performance? thanks for the warning of buying outside US. i saw one seller selling the 12cell battery 9600 mAh for 60 dollars. and its based in california. i'll probably give it a try.

@2.0

thanks for the tip.

 

Buying from a vendor in California sounds great! Good price too. My new battery performance is exactly the same as my original 12 cell HP battery - about 2 1.2 hours. I was hoping for more, but that's what it is. . .

 

HP laptops come with the battery check utility. If the battery fails the test HP will cover it under warranty. I replaced one on my laptop. The other laptop (also dv5) the battery always reported that calibration needed. I tried to calibrate it but it wouldn't (keep getting the same message). HP replace that one under warranty as well.
There are ways to monitor the battery usage using third party program like battery pro. It shows you the remaining time, battery wear...

Also with DV5 I will strongly recommend to disable fan always on in the bios. You may have to update the bios to get it working as the older versions had bugs and disabling that feature had no effect.
Though my favourite is undervolting the processor. It saves the battery life and laptop doesn't generate much heat. Just keep in mind once you reinstall video drivers you have to reinstall undervolt utility.

 

Aren't all those batteries from China anyways? What's the point of paying a premium for a American based company when the product is exactly the same? As long as their feedback rating is good I don't really see why not get the Chinese bootleg products straight from China XD

 

@meever

good point. i think the problem when getting a battery from china is the warranty. the shipping cost will be expensive. when getting it locally, should the battery fail the shipping rate will be cheap. just like what 2.0 and abandon said.