OT: Laptop battery vendor?

[smontanaro]

My 2-3 year-old Dell Precision M5520 needs a new battery. I bought one from a seller on Amazon which clearly has problems. There is so much crap floating around Amazon that I've decided to look elsewhere.

Are there any laptop battery vendors out there who people have used and like? Based in the US would be preferred, but I'm not biased against overseas vendors aside from the hassle when something needs to be returned.

[cmbicycles]

I cant make a recommendation other than from Dell, if they have it, or some local to you retailer. Online is a swamp for cheap knockoffs (computer or a "Batteries N Bulbs" type store). I had a similar issue buying a battery for my old Samsung phone. I bought an "oem" battery from amazon and it swelled up so bad after 2 months the back cover of the phone popped off. I put the original battery back and dealt with the frequent charging necessary until I replaced the phone.

[el cheapo]

https://discountelectronics.com out of Austin. Lot's of Dell stuff at reduced prices. Bought my Precision there five years ago. High marks for customer service!

[Bentley]

They “rebuild” lots of batteries, might be worth a try. Prices are reasonable.

[smontanaro]

Thanks all. I got a response from the seller overnight:

We will refund your money.
This product does not need to be returned.

In the end, I went with https://www.laptopbatteryexpress.com/. Their about us page indicates they are a family-owned business in Ohio and even gave the owners' names. We'll see how this round goes.

[GScot]

Dell let me down I thought. 14 month old high end laptop that is still in production had the battery completely fail one morning. Didn't expect anything free but wanted to buy an OEM battery and was told by Dell that those are problematic so they don't replace them. Nothing available from the factory or outlets.

I did find a supposed OEM from a place on ebay in California and it has worked perfectly for the last few months. Must be a premium knock off because it has better life than the original ever did.

[smontanaro]

GScot's post reminded me of another thing that helped tip the scale in favor of Laptop Batteries Express. Again from their about us page:

We never deal in used or refurbished batteries and we will only represent batteries that carry a full 2 year warranty with premium battery cells. In fact, you are likely to have improved run times over your original battery due to improvements in battery technology.

Now, those are just words, but hopefully that suggests their commitment to the niche in which they operate.

[Ralph]

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=laptop+battery

Have been satisfied with newegg before.

[smontanaro]

Originally Posted by Ralph

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=laptop+battery

Have been satisfied with newegg before.

As have I, though only BITD when newegg was just them, not a platform for third party sellers. I did find what I was looking for on newegg, sent a question to the seller, and never heard back. It seems newegg is trying to compete with Amazon in some ways. That, unfortunately, seems to admit some sketchy players to the game.

[smontanaro]

Hopefully last post on this thread. I received a new battery from Laptop Battery Express, and I must say, I'm quite happy with the battery and with their service. In addition to the battery itself, they sent along the two small screwdrivers necessary to install it (Torx T-5 and a small Phillips - though I had both, I realize many customers won't) as well as instructions on care and feeding of the battery, especially the first few cycles. I'd never seen this information collected in one place before, so with their permission, I scanned the instructions and tossed a copy on my Google Drive:

Laptop Battery Express Instructions

Hopefully some folks will find it useful.

[MattTuck]

Just seeing this thread now. Glad you got a (sounds like) very satisfying resolution. It is outrageous that laptops are being sold with sealed batteries these days. The batteries have a few year's worth of charge cycles, then the companies expect you to trash the computer.


Are you happy with the decision to go with the precision over a regular Dell XPS?

[robt57]

I got via eBay quite reasonably a battery for my I7 HP after the orig was done. Just leaving it plugged in didn't work as the reading of the state in the hardware was confusing the ability to read said state as making for flake using the system.

Got PN on HP's site and eBayed the correct HP battery. Apparently just like my Di2, firmware of components need to get along. Keyboard mapping problems, some keys only work if you hit it 10+times etc. Until you forced the interupt buffer on the system, argh!

HP's solution was to refresh the laptop from the backup partition and reinstall and restore backups.

I have enough experience to know this process was going to take longer to do that starting from scratch on a new laptop. Especially when the new laptop has 2 more cores/8 more thread and an SSD [my first]. Never bother with a non SSD system drive ever is all I have to say.

Boots from dead cold to the desktop in 4.5 seconds. 1 second less to wake up from hibernation.

Moral of the story; now my computrainer has 3 previous laptops sitting under the i7 which services my trainer setup.

External keyboard to get around those pesky keys, and I can still pay my bills on it if I had to...

I wish the OP better battery replacement luck than I endured...

FWIW, I was Network Infrastructure IT guy before retiring..

[smontanaro]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

Are you happy with the decision to go with the precision over a regular Dell XPS?

Yeah, I am. I don't think there's much difference. At the time, the Precision could be ordered with Linux while the XPS 15 only came with Windows. For whatever reason it was actually a few bucks cheaper than an XPS 15, so it was win-win. I could clearly have purchased either with Windows and installed Linux myself, but I wanted to send a (small) signal to Dell to keep on offering Linux as an option.

It worked out well in another respect. The Precision, as a presumably commercial product, came with a bit more support from Dell as standard. I used this a couple times. One, a couple pixels dropped out on the screen. I sent it back and they replaced it, no charge. I think it might have received a more substantial transplant as well (motherboard? keyboard? can't recall exactly). Shortly thereafter, I noticed a few of the screws holding the back on had gone missing (their tech probably failed to properly tighten them during the earlier repair). Dell FedEx'd the correct screws to me. Probably cost them many times more for the postage than the parts.