Refurbished Batteries, Good or Bad?

TheMadReaper asks: "I recently had to replace my laptop battery and couldn't decide whether to go for a new battery or a refurbished one. The refurbished ones are sold at a lot of places, but then I ran across this article that claims that refurbished batteries suck. For sure a bunch of you out there have tried refurbished batteries. So tell me, are they a good buy or a scam?"

As a reseller .....

[matt65114]

We sell lots of laptops most of which sell with referb batteries and we have pretty good luck with them. Most last for 2-3 hours which is good enough for most people. I guess it depends on your standards for battery life.

Re:As a reseller .....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is from experience with a Palm Vx - regardless of refurbishing age affects battery life. My Palm Vx, which used to last a week or two with light use and 3-4 days with heavy (usually 3-4 days :) ) is now 3-4 yrs. old and won't last more than an hour between charges (I charge as soon as it starts warning me). So battery life is *much* better /w newer batteries, *and* new ones charge faster (I think).

The problems with refurbs are...

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

the lack of available specs. and guarantees.

You are handing them a black box that doesn't work, and getting back one that does. This leaves a great deal of room for them to use cheaply available surplus cells to refurb. the pack. The fact is, if your battery is more than a year old it's very likely cells of the same dimensions and voltage are available with even better amp-hour ratings than the original. But it's hard for companies to compete who sell a product with the improved batteries as the metrics buy which their competition, and the original manufacturer are rated are nebulous, fakeable and often unavailable. I've had good luck with the people at PrimeCell [primecell.com].

Having played with Li-Ion charge circuits (yes, just the reference design from Atmel) I can see that calibration might be an issue. I don't however think it will be a critical one. Very smart chargers can in fact compensate for the changing characteristics of aging batteries. That the people replacing them would insert cells with characteristics within the "acceptable margins." of the compensating code doesn't sound impossible either.

Nothing wrong with recycled batteries here.

[zulux]

I've been using them in my laptops for over a year now, and let me tell you thA@@!....[NO CARRIER]

[NO CARRIER]

[WIAKywbfatw]

That "no carrier" joke really doesn't work if you include your sig.

Sorry, no cigar for you.

Re:[NO CARRIER]

[cymen]

That "no carrier" joke really doesn't work if you include your sig.

You were right up until "if you include your sig."...

That "no carrier" joke really doesn't work.

Period.

How do you "refurb" a battery?

[jsimon12]

Batteries have a finite number of charge discharge cycles before they are rendered chemically inactive. So unless they replace the electrolyte you only can discharge the battery whatever remaining cycles it has. So think on that little bit of info before buying a "refurb" battery.

Re:How do you "refurb" a battery?

[FueledByRamen]

The refurbisher disassembles the battery pack, replaces the individual cells inside, and recalibrates/replaces any charging circuitry if cells sharing the originals' charging characteristics can not be found. A fairly simple proceedure.

Re:How do you "refurb" a battery?

[realdpk]

Keep in mind I don't have a lot of knowledge about batteries...

If you replace the cells and circuitry, what's left other than the casing? That is, what makes it worthwhile?

Re:How do you "refurb" a battery?

[Bitsy Boffin]

Because I guess the casings are not exactly cheap or readily available.

Re:How do you "refurb" a battery?

[Grishnakh]

You just got it, even though you don't know it: the casing. Ever notice that every laptop in existence has a completely different battery pack? Inside, they're filled with standard-shaped cells (AA, for instance), all soldered together. You can get replacement cells anywhere, but since the casings are all different, you need a company that makes that. Even worse, many modern battery packs have charging circuits built in, and/or LED displays to show their current capacity. If your cells are worn out, th

Re:How do you "refurb" a battery?

[realdpk]

Makes sense now. I didn't know the cases were such a big part of it.

I'd bet this already exists, but I haven't personally seen it. A service where you bring in your old battery, case and all, and they swap out the cells for you, for a fee. That'd be neat.

Re:How do you "refurb" a battery?

[Malcolm Scott]

They're talking about ripping the batteries apart and replacing some or all of the individual cells inside. ...Read the article :-)

Sure, it works, but ...

[gordguide]

Like anything, there's room for problems.

Laptop battery packs generally will have a certain number of cells, of a certain type and electical specification. Replacing them (imagine that rectangular box filled with a bunch of AA cells) with the correct ones, and you may have a perfectly fresh batt-pack.

There are also some solid-state components in many battery packs; either replace them (if they're bad) or re-use them (if the refurbisher bothered to test them; most do). A common problem is somebody cutting or damaging these parts when taking the thing apart.

The cells need to be soldered, usually, and to metal, not wires. You need to know what you're doing when soldering batteries (heat can make 'em explode, or fail).

I've done a few myself; they work fine. The only reason I went that route, however, was because I had an old laptop I got for free and wanted to play with it, not spend a hundred or more bucks on it. I ended up spending about $50 for cells.

Having said that, I prefer fresh (newly manufactured) batteries over refurbished ones; a refurb is only as fresh as the cells the guy used to make it.

If you buy from a reputable refurbisher, I don't see a real problem; especially if he does enough volume to have fresh cells in the battpack. But, like anything, it's buyer beware; there are plenty of ways to screw it up, and you need to be able to trust your supplier.

Depends on the reseller's idea of refurbishing.

[chewedtoothpick]

Here in my local town, a competing computer shop sells 'refurbished' used computers that all they do is reformat the system; they don't even bother dusting them. This is a wide-spread problem that is due to perception. Some shops will, as another post mentioned, physically disassemble and refurbish the pack, or some shops will just 'recondion' it which is a matter of fully charging and fully discharging it a few times. Ask the shops how thoroughly they 'refurbish' the packs and ask if they are just simply refurbishing the charge (reconditioning) or the actual componets. This will also help test the honesty and friendliness of the shop!

Question I had before

[zogger]

--I brought this up in another thread, but it was really a thread drift effort, something I have wondered for a long time now. Why can't these laptop makers just come up with a slide in slide out battery pack that accepts off the shelf rechargeable batteries? D or C or AA cells? I have a couple of the bulk re-charging stations for those batteries (nicads is what I have) and they work great, and if you get a bad cell, it is easily replaced,stores all over sell them, and they relatively cheap. So many other consumer devices use standardized batteries, but as soon as you get to "computer" then non standardized and ridiculously expensive rules. Wazzup with that, is it as simple as they just make so much profit on their custom designed batt packs that they don't care?

X-ray of a PowerBook says you're right on the $

[adzoox]

Good point - look at an XRay of a PowerBook [asu.edu] and what do you see?

Re:X-ray of a PowerBook says you're right on the $

[Anti_Climax]

It may seem like those are standard cells, But after pulling apart my Dell laptop battery, I found those Cells to be significantly larger than AAs and longer than c cells. It would be fairly difficult to obtain 17-19 volts at a respectable A/hr rating with even the best off-the-shelf NiMH or LIon cells.

Re:Question I had before

[Cecil]

Wazzup with that, is it as simple as they just make so much profit on their custom designed batt packs that they don't care?

Bingo. I think that's the majority of the reason. There are other things to think about though. First of all, the type of battery is a concern. NiCads are very heavy for the amount of capacity they give. Second only to Lead Acid, I think. NiCad batteries put out a very low voltage compared to other types of cells. I don't think they are very good at handling massive output, high-drain devices such as a laptop. They are also not very environmentally friendly -- cadmium is an extremely toxic metal. Given the number of problems we already have dealing with computer waste, I think it's good to try and avoid NiCad batteries.

Moving on to Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries instead: They're certainly feasable to use as laptop batteries, I think the major problem is that the way that the standard AA/C/D cells are laid out, you get a much much lower amount of energy storage for a given amount of space when you combine the roundness of the cells, plus the packaging and terminals, etc. And space in laptops is at a premium -- battery life is already too short, no need making it shorter.

With that said, I'm all for settling on a few standards for laptop batteries. And while we're at it, some standards for expansion bay equipment would be really nice... okay, okay, I'll quit my dreaming now.

Re:Question I had before

[Rob Simpson]

Yeah, that sounds about right. It'd be nice if someone came up with an "E" cell (or whatever), but then there'd be competition and reduced profit margins.

As an aside, the battery pack for my cordless phone is just three AAA NIMH batteries packed together with a connector. o_O

Performance and charging circuitry

[Andy Dodd]

Almost all laptops made for the past 5-6 years use Lithium-Ion batteries.

Charging circuity designed for Li-Ion is totally unsuitable for laptops.

Putting out a battery pack that accepted arbitrary Li-Ion cells is currently illegal - In order to purchase bare Li-Ion sells you apparently have to have some sort of a license. (If you look for bare Li-Ion cells online, they are ALWAYS sold in packs, even if they might be advertised as a "pair of cells", reading the fine print often reveals that they're in a pa

Re:Performance and charging circuitry

[zogger]

OK, that makes some sense. I have a few examples of which you speak, the hand held transceivers, with dual way of inserting batteries, the packs or individual batteries.

It still would be nice though, to have an option. Like I have three older but still useful laptops now, none of which have decent batts in them that will hold a charge (couple minutes basically, then flat), just getting one replacement each is very expensive, getting two apiece for 6 total would almost cost as much as another low end laptop

What about 2nd Hand batteries

[rgbe]

My laptop (Toshiba 440-CDX) battery died on me about 6 months ago, yes it was annoying,... I couldn't use my laptop as a walkman on the way home from Uni.

But then I bought an older model laptop (Toshiba 410-CDT) for parts from an online auction, it came with a battery that luckily suited my new laptop and that battery has been very good. This method is however hit and miss.

Psi

Is it like refurbished printer cartrages

[zbowling]

Printer cartrages have been refurbished for years. HP and Cannon does it all the time. The method of how HP designed its cartrages with the replaceable print head built inside is like a battery when it comes to ware-and-tare. HP has lead contacts on the back edge for connecting to the printer. These contacts are not very well designed and don't really put up with the test of removing and replacing very well. Not to mention that the head (even if professionally cleaned) never work as well as a new one would.

Batteries face the same problems. The contacts get beat up and the batteries loose their memory if your blessed with a Nickel Cadium(NiCd) battery. Even if a NiCd is cleaned and refreshed it still lacks the physical ablitly to retain power for as long as a new one. The new type of rechargable battery (Nickel Platinum) is better at it but I've been hearing some bad things about them from some friends.

Best bet is to avoid them unless you want a spare or you get a really good deal.

Good luck.

Re:Is it like refurbished printer cartrages

[PurpleFloyd]

NiCds haven't been seen in the laptop industry for ages; their capacity-to-weight ratio is abysmal. While you might see NiMH (nickel metal hydride) batteries in older or off-brand laptops, the type included with pretty much every new laptop from a major manufacturer is LiIon (lithium ion), which beats the pants off NiCd and NiMH in the capacity-to-weight and capacity-to-volume ratios, but tends to be picky about how it's charged. The issue the article's author has with LiIon "refurbishers" is that they re

Couple of notes

[Andy Dodd]

"calibration" of charging circuitry is BS. Look at the datasheets of any of the charge controller ICs from TI, National Semiconductor, etc. None of these have any "calibration", they are pretty generic. Li-Ion is actually not as hard to charge as many make it out to be, it is simply VERY different in its needs than NiCd or NiMH. In fact, proper charging of a LiIon is easier than proper charging of NiMH, although NiMH is much more resilient to improper charging.

Li-Ion charge cycle: Constant current, up to a maximum charging voltage. Constant-voltage at either 4.1 or 4.2 volts/cell depending on cell chemistry. (There are two different classes of Li-Ion cell, depending on the makeup of one of the electrodes.) It's not that hard. NiCd and NiMH need fancy charging schemes such as reverse slope detection. (Once fully charged, a NiCd or NiMH battery will actually REDUCE its voltage as it accepts more charge - "smart" NiMH chargers detect this.)

Battery meters (gas gauges) do need recalibration, and I admit that cell matching is reasonably important. Replacing a single cell in a pack is a no-no. Replacing all cells at once with new ones should be fine.

As to refurb printer cartridges: It's not the contacts on the HPs that are the issue, it's the method that HP uses to drive the ink droplets out. HP's inkjets are "thermal inkjets" - Each nozzle in the head has a small resistor in it. When the printer wants to shoot an ink droplet out, current is run through this resistor, and it vaporizes some of the ink. Needless to say, these resistors start burning out soon after the design life of the cart.

Canon and Epson printers are different - They use piezoelectric drivers which have near-infinite life. As a result, both Canon and Epson don't have nozzles and drivers in the cartridge, the cartridges are merely tanks of ink and nothing more. These can be refilled safely many times. (One just has to be careful about residual dried ink.) Some companies sell kits that allow you to do away with the cartridge and draw ink directly from a bulk ink bottle.

Depends on the refurb method

[Andy Dodd]

Single-cell replacement - BAD
Charge/discharge "reconditioning" - REALLY BAD
Replacement of all cells - You should be fine. The pack will be nearly as good as the OEM pack, sometimes better.

An example of a good pack reconditioner is Raymond Sarrio's business (www.batteriesamerica.com) - Although his selection of laptop batteries is limited, his specialty is in amateur (ham) radio batteries. Sarrio is well known as an excellent dealer in ham circles. Many of Sarrio's repacks are regarded as BETTER than the original packs. (The NiCd ones are only slightly better, but Sarrio offers NiMH repacks for equipment that was originally NiCd and never had a NiMH option.)

I did a NiMH repack myself in my Alinco DJ-580T's pack, with excellent results. I now have close to twice the battery life I had before, and that's using dirt-cheap super-low-capacity (1200 mAh) NiMHs.