Replacement Batteries for Z11

I'm sure this has been covered many times, but i can't find it with searches or just browsing, so I beg your inndulgence.

I would like to purchase a high capacity, 7200 mwh battery, but not for $249 from Sony! There are many, many "clone" batteries advertised on eBay, Amazon and many other sites at $135- $149, agian for the high capacity battery.

Any words to the wise? Specific replacement vendors to recommend. (I have had excellent luck with several for HP products, but the few I have rcord of using do not stock Sony replacements.)

Thanks much.

 

Word to the wise is to buy a genuine Sony replacement battery- but off eBay or some other place for less than MSRP. The generic batteries require a BIOS patch to get around the battery authentication during bootup. Some members have reported issues with this process on other Vaios. I would say, if you spent this large sum of money on the computer, don't cheap out on the generic batteries if it can adversely affect your computer via the BIOS update.

 

Or they could be poorly built and fry your computer :/

edit: sparepartswarehouse.com has the large capacity for $193 factory direct:

http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/Sony,Vaio,VPC-Z1-Series,VPC-Z119,Laptop,Batteries.aspx

if you find anywhere else cheaper tell me, i'm considering it

 

These two on eBay claim to be original:

$160:

NEW GENUINE SONY VGP-BPL20 EXTENDED BATTERY 7800 VPC-Z | eBay

$170:

Genuine Battery SONY VGP-BPS20/B VGP-BPL20 VAIO VPCZ110 | eBay

 

I wonder if the "black" one is the same color as the ones that come with the premium CF lids... It's more of a grey than black, no? In any case, good find if they're real... now i regret not grabbing a ton of the ebay bucks on groupon... there was a massive grab of them on slickdeals...

 

These definitely look authentic and the best prices around. Even the generics are no cheaper than $134; $26-$36 is a ridiculous amount to try to save. When we were talking $150 difference, well, it probably talked me out of getting the bigger battery now This sounds fantastic.

Really bugs me how many reviewers praiseAsus's and Lenovos (with their std batteries, and I mean pre-x220) for getting great battery life, while mildly pan the Z for getting "only ok" battery life, when the Lenvos (not to mention Asus) models have 8-9 cell, 70,000-90,000 mAH batteries. Seems to me that with the 9 cell, the Z will get 7-9 hrs on Intel, 5-7 hrs on nVidia, and leave this marvel at 4 lbs! Plus, all the other mfrs' models high cap batteries stick out too. Just think it's nuts that any reviewer would fault a $2,000 computer for mediocre battery life, when a 5% increase in the price when new (only $100 for the upgrade) gets you, well, truly superb battery life for a machine this powerful.

Don't ya just hate those writers sometimes?

 

If anyone picks up one of those batteries, I too would like to know what color it actually is.

I got the carbon lid on my computer, and my battery is the dark gray color that matches the palmrest. I wonder if the large capacity battery is this color or not.

 

All the high-cap batteries I have seen listed - from Sony Style on down - have said the color is "black," which is either a match for the dark gray carbon fiber or the black base, either of which should be fine for you.