Question Are There Any Reliable Ways To Get A Replacement Battery In The US For An Older Laptop Without It Costing As Much As The Laptop Itself?

[Cyber_Akuma]

It feels like I have two options when buying a replacement battery for a laptop, either buy it straight from the manufacturer or from a place like BatteriesPlus.... which can cost at least $100 if not more.

.... or try to buy it literally anywhere else where it's always "too-good-to-be-true" prices from all sorts of random clearly Chinese/Hong Kong sellers that could be all sorts of shoddy (And the last thing I want to get shoddy is a device that can catch on fire or explode due to the chemicals used in it).

I suppose that official price is not TOO bad if you have some top-of-the-line $2000-4000 laptop (although if this is the case the battery should not have failed that fast unless it's defective), but for older laptops which themselves cost $100-200 or even less it's not at all reasonable to pay as much or more for the battery than the laptop itself (especially the models that have two batteries, like this T480 I have two two dead batteries). Is there any other option? Is there a way to get a reasonable or reliable battery even if it's not an original OEM model that doesn't cost an arm and a leg while not being a piece of junk that who knows the quality or reliability of?

 

[COLGeek]

Like this? https://www.amazon.com/T470-T480-Extended-Battery-4X50M08812/dp/B09MVRQJNQ?th=1

Ratings seem good. Amazon has a solid return policy. Cost is reasonable.

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

Problem is a lot of the bad batteries start showing issues a few months later, not immediately. Lots of fake reviews on Amazon lately too, even something like Fakespot is giving warning signs about that one.

 

[COLGeek]

Problem is a lot of the bad batteries start showing issues a few months later, not immediately. Lots of fake reviews on Amazon lately too, even something like Fakespot is giving warning signs about that one.

Understood. You may have to take a chance on one like that to keep the cost reasonable. I'm sure there are many similar products.

Seems to be an industry wide concern for older laptops with limited options in this regard.

I went through something similar with a couple older HPs last year. So far, the knock-offs are seemingly okay.

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

Yeah, I was almost tempted to tear the pack apart and try to replace the cells, but that's insanely risky (Pretty much my only option for this REALLY old laptop I want to use for retro gaming through).

The laptop has two batteries, an internal and external one, both are shot.

I normally don't mind rolling the dice on something like this to see if it would work, my main concern with batteries though is risk of fire or worse, it's not like I am buying a shoddy cable or something where the worst that can happen is that it just won't work.

 

[COLGeek]

Yeah, I was almost tempted to tear the pack apart and try to replace the cells, but that's insanely risky (Pretty much my only option for this REALLY old laptop I want to use for retro gaming through).

The laptop has two batteries, an internal and external one, both are shot.

I normally don't mind rolling the dice on something like this to see if it would work, my main concern with batteries though is risk of fire or worse, it's not like I am buying a shoddy cable or something where the worst that can happen is that it just won't work.

Understood. I would recommend this then. Only plug in when using. That will charge and allow for full performance while gaming. When you power down, disconnect the power supply. This will minimize the potential for damage, overheating, swelling, etc.

 

[Eximo]

Yeah, I was almost tempted to tear the pack apart and try to replace the cells, but that's insanely risky (Pretty much my only option for this REALLY old laptop I want to use for retro gaming through).

Most of the laptop batteries I have seen have tamper detection systems. If the charging safety circuit loses power to the battery, then it will refuse to work again. Or minimum you get pop-ups from OEM system that say like 'Non-genuine battery detected' and then they refuse to charge, or will only charge at the slowest rate.

Best to pay the premium for genuine parts. Lithium Ion batteries aren't to be trifled with.

Worst case with a 'bad' battery is likely to be less wattage than advertised, usually the trick to making cheaper parts is to sacrifice something.

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

Most of the laptop batteries I have seen have tamper detection systems. If the charging safety circuit loses power to the battery, then it will refuse to work again. Or minimum you get pop-ups from OEM system that say like 'Non-genuine battery detected' and then they refuse to charge, or will only charge at the slowest rate.

How far back does this go? I am assuming that for sure the batteries in this T480 have that, since it's an 8th gen Intel system. Hardly state of the art, but not exactly ancient either. (I got it because it was the cheapest laptop I could get that could officially support Windows 11, while also being easy to open and upgrade/repair, starting to fall in love with Thinkpads over this...). The batteries in this thing are super thin anyway so I don't think I can reliably replace the cells.

I have as a side-project though a much much older Pentium 4 laptop that I want to revive for retro PC gaming for games that I can't get to run on a modern OS/hardware, needless to say it's battery is long dead, but also a much thicker and larger plastic box. Would even something that old have such a detection system?

 

[punkncat]

Batteries Plus are rapingly over expensive. Might check with places such as "The Battery Guy" and similar.
I personally have found that well reviewed Amazon suppliers tend to be the best bet. It is never going to be a battery as good as the first one, but the pricing is so attractive that you can buy quite a few of them before coming close to the manufacturer price, if available and not NOS.

 

[Eximo]

Pretty much. Last time I was able to do an 18650 replacement in a laptop chassis was maybe around 2005?

Getting the proper prismatic cell (pouch) isn't that easy to track down either.

Still this post from 2012 goes into a little more detail:

"The Lenovo pack does contain a pack disabling device. If the cells got too far from being voltage matched, or the circuit detected current flowing when the protection FET's were off, or overtemp conditions beyond certain limits, the device triggers. Just shorting around the Permanent Failure (PF) device will not fix the pack. The fuel gauge in the pack (Lenovo has one in all their notebook packs, as do Dell, HP, etc.) monitors this device and once it has blown it, or the secondary protection circuit has blown it, it sets a PF flag in a location of non-volatile memory. Until that flag is cleared, the pack will refuse to enable the protection FET's, and will attempt to blow the fuse again, as it thinks it was unsuccessful in fully blowing the fuse, and will try again. Lenovo also password protects the calibration and fuse bits in the fuel gauge and safety circuitry, so you would need to hack that before being able to reset the PF bit in non-volatile memory."

Others in the thread mentioned that some laptop batteries literally have a recharge count and will disable themselves after a certain watt hours or full charge cycles happens.

Also the matter of having balanced cells, so one low resistance cell doesn't get overcharged.

 

[faalin]

could give this a try https://www.battdepot.com/us/model/notebook+battery/lenovo/thinkpad+t480+20l6s4d100/lln346x.aspx