Clone battery in old laptop

Vertigo · 25 Sep 2015 at 20:55

I've inherited an old lappy (eight years old to be exact) and the battery is completely toast.

Been looking around the bay and there are countless people selling no-name compatible clones for around a tenner. Are these a safe option? Anyone with experience of these things? Are they likely to melt/explode/kill me?

Steveocee · 25 Sep 2015 at 21:34

Just bought one for my ageing e6400. I'm quite annoyed as OS is already reporting the battery as only holding 75% of what it should.

It's only the desktop laptop though so I'll probably throw the old one back in and leave it perma on charge.

ttaskmaster · 26 Sep 2015 at 01:03

I've bought loads of clone battery packs and all have been crap. 90% of laptop battery's use unprotected 18650 lithium ion cells, whilst they can be dangerous if overcharged the battery pack itself has a built in protection circuit preventing this happening.

The only real problem with the clone battery's is the quality of the 18650s , a cheap 18650 can be as little as a pound where as a quality one such as a samsung or panasonic will be between £5 and £10 per cell, hense why a £10 clone battery will never be any good.

Vertigo · 26 Sep 2015 at 07:56

Ta for that.

I've seen some batteries advertised as "Genuine Dell" ones (and the picture has the right logos etc) also at cheap prices but, as they're from Chinese sellers, I kind of presume they're also fakes/clones, just masquerading as genuine?

ttaskmaster · 28 Sep 2015 at 16:51

Vertigo1 said:
Ta for that.

I've seen some batteries advertised as "Genuine Dell" ones (and the picture has the right logos etc) also at cheap prices but, as they're from Chinese sellers, I kind of presume they're also fakes/clones, just masquerading as genuine?

Yes , or old stock which is just as useless