Battery replacement costs

If you’re going to rely on your portable laptop, being able to buy a second or replacement battery is essential.

Heavyweights such as Lenovo and Compaq only cover their batteries for the first year of their three-year warranties. This highlights the fact that batteries really can fail, so being able to source a replacement can be a high priority.

Longer battery life is another common motive for buying a second battery. HP’s Compaq 2710p, for example, lets you bolt a second battery onto the bottom of the chassis. This adds bulk, but the lights will stay on for longer.

A lot of batteries come from third-party suppliers, which can mean quality and supply can vary. When calling up PC World’s and Samsung’s sales hotlines, both companies requested that we spoke to a third party, Partmaster.co.uk, about buying batteries.

In Samsung’s case, we were able to get a suggested retail price from a spokesperson, but Partmaster.co.uk had no idea the Q45 ­ which has been around for six months now even existed.

Since most manufacturers quote whimsical figures for battery life it’s important to get a grip on what the different figures really mean. In shops, the number of cells a battery has is often highlighted (six-cell, eight-cell etc), but this really doesn’t give you an indication of how long it will last.

Alongside the number of cells, most manufacturers rate their batteries in ampere hours, with the noticeable exception of HP.

By traditional metrics, ampere hours aren’t a measure of the total charge a battery contains. Watt hours do indicate the total energy inside a battery, but watt hours are also a difficult figure to calculate because as batteries discharge, their operating voltage decreases down to just a few volts.

Each battery has a different voltage-decrease curve (the better the battery, the smoother the curve), so there’s no perfect unit for comparison.

Ultimately though, only real-word benchmarks, such as the Bapco suites we use at PCW (see Performance graphs, page 2 of 2) can reveal which battery and component setup will last longest.

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This article is part of a group test, see also:
1 Introduction
2 The great weight conundrum
3 Acer Travelmate 6292 review
4 Advent 8112 review
5 Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7230 review
6 Hi-Grade Notino D2200 review
7 HP Compaq 2710p review
8 HP Pavilion TX-1260ea review
9 Lenovo Thinkpad X61 review
10 MSI PR200-064UK review
11 Panasonic Toughbook CF-W7 review
12 Samsung Q45-A007 review
13 Toshiba Portégé R500-10U review
14 Performance graphs, page 1 of 2
15 Performance graphs, page 2 of 2
16 Replacement battery costs
17 Conclusion and awards

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