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View Full Version : Advice regarding laptop battery purchase



The Flying Penguin
November 1st, 2010, 01:29 AM
So the barely six month old battery in my Asus UL30VT went bad and it made me realize how important it is to have a backup battery. So I've been looking online and found that there are 12 cell extended batteries available. I get 6-8 hours of battery life with my stock 8 cell running my dedicated graphic card which is pretty darn good. I should really be able to get some good battery life out of an extended.


I'm thinking of: http://cgi.ebay.com/12-CELL-BATTERY-ASUS-A42-UL30-A42-UL50-A42-UL80-/250710685491?pt=Laptop_Batteries&hash=item3a5f857733


I checked Asus website first and they want around $130 just for an 8 cell. They don't even have an extended battery listed. The one I linked to would cost me $63.88, is a 12 cell, is rated at 7800 mAh (stock is 4400 If I recall), and has a 36 month warranty. I'm worried about the quality though. Has anyone ever bought these “cheap ebay” batteries? The 3 year warranty does give me some degree of confidence against it dying prematurely but that still doesn't mean it will perform well. Perhaps they use some shoddy standards for determining battery specs? Maybe it won't last that much longer than the stock battery? One would think it should get nearly double the stock, like 12-16 hour range.


Is there a particular brand I should stick with? Is genuine the only way to go? Is there a more reputable seller or brand I should look into?


Any advice would be much appreciated!

themusicalduck
November 1st, 2010, 01:46 AM
I bought a new 9 cell battery off ebay recently for my Acer Aspire One.

It worked great for about 2 full cycles and now it won't hold charge at all. The netbook won't even switch on when it's plugged in.

That's only my experience though. It was from a different seller, capowerinc. I contacted them and they replied very quickly with an RMA, so hopefully I'll get a replacement pretty soon.

I might've just been very unlucky, but most likely the build quality is less so there is more risk of it breaking.

I can't really complain considering it cost less than half the price for a 6 cell genuine battery though, assuming the replacement doesn't break too.

edit: by the way, the range I got on it was about 5 and a half to 6 hours. Much better than the stock battery which lasted about an hour and a half.