replacing laptop battery... advice please.

[MontyVeda]

I'm looking at laptop batteries on Ebay for my old Acer laptop.

current battery (no longer retains charge) is 10.8v, 4400mAh, 48Wh, but the replacements on Ebay all appear to be 5200mAh and 58Wh, with 10.8v and 11.1v versions available.

The listings all claim compatibility with my laptop, but they could just be saying that. I'm cautious about mismatching a li-ion battery with the power supply i have, but it would be nice to be able to use my laptop on battery power every now and again.

Does the voltage, milli-amps and wattage need to be exactly the same as my current battery, or are these 'near enough' generic batteries really compatible?

Cheers.

 

[JohnHughes307]

The voltage needs to be the same (although the 0.3 v difference between 10.8 and 11.1v probably wouldn't make much/any difference) - but the mAh and Wh are measures of battery capacity and output capacity, which don't matter from a compatibility point of view.

 

[numbnuts]

What he^^ said

 

[MontyVeda]

Cheers guys. Battery bought.

 

[PhilDawson8270]

I'd be more wary of cheap eBay lithium batteries than mismatching them.

 

[mjr]

I'd be more wary of cheap eBay lithium batteries than mismatching them.

If the laptop's more than a few months old, the battery's probably discontinued.

 

[Pale Rider]

The new battery won't wear out as quickly if you can be bothered to remove it from the laptop when you are using the mains.

All lithium ion batteries are best stored part-charged.

Anything between 20 and 80 percent will do, but fully charging them stresses the cells.

That's also why the battery wears out faster if left in the laptop when on the mains, because it is always full.

 

[ColinJ]

I bought a generic replacement battery for my old Dell laptop on eBay. It worked for about 2 years before packing up. Given that it only cost me about £15, I was happy with that. It had about 30% more capacity than the original, which was good. OTOH, it was physically deeper and heavier so it made the laptop a little less portable.