Looking at a replacement 9-cell battery for my Dell 1525 I've noticed that the OEM batteries that Dell sells are up to 3x more expensive than batteries sold by a 3rd party vendor. Is the Dell premium worth it? What experiences have you had buying replacement batteries?
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Though it may be subjective/argumentive, I feel that you can't really argue with Wil's answer. It's just good advice!– Ivo FlipseCommented Jan 18, 2010 at 9:54
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Check the Dell website for customer reviews of their AC adapters. You'll quickly see that Dell's own stuff is very poor quality, apparently built to fail in about 2 years, so that you'll have to pay for a new one (they get about a 90% profit margin on them).– MGOwenCommented May 26, 2010 at 1:31
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2 Answers
Honestly, I have never had a problem with third party batteries where the specification matches.
However, if your laptop is still in warranty, I would only use official ones as they will probably use this as an excuse not to service the laptop.
If the laptop is out of warranty, I would personally use a third party battery.
answered Jan 18, 2010 at 2:12
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3Even if the laptop is in warranty, how can they use this as an excuse? If you have to claim warranty, you can always put in the original battery :-).– sleskeCommented Jun 20, 2010 at 20:04
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Also note that in many countries, it is not allowed to deny a warrant claim just because an aftermarket part was used; the vendor has to prove that the part actually caused the problem. In the US e.g. this is apparently regulated by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act– sleskeCommented Jun 20, 2010 at 20:15
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Agreed -- in many cases, a new 3rd party battery will have cells with higher specs than the original, especially in terms of recharge cycle life (the number of times you can recharge the battery before it loses too much capacity). Watch the other specs, though; mAh are what gives hours and minutes of operation. Sometimes, you can get more of those, along with better recharge cycle life, for less than half the money. Commented May 27, 2016 at 11:31
When it comes to crucial parts like batteries i always recommend a replacement by the manufacturer.
Dell is certainly not cheap when it comes to replacement batteries, but a battery for only 33% of Dell's price sounds rather fishy to me.
Worst case scenario (being the devil's advocate here): The battery could be a fire hazard and any damage caused by a fire may not be covered by the insurance if an investigation can trace the cause to an uncertified replacement battery (hence the quite frequent recalls by manufacturers if the slightest suspicion arises that a battery is potentially unsafe). Any warranty concerns will be rather minor then.
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In many cases (specifically Dell replacements, in my experience) the 3rd party battery is made in the same molds as the OEM unit, populated with the same or even newer technology, better cells, and still sold for less because it doesn't go through another markup level (or two) before consumer purchase. Simply selling the batteries to Dell for resale to the consumer would account for the 3x price difference. Commented May 27, 2016 at 11:35
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@ZeissIkon: It might well be possible to find batteries made by the same manufacturer supplying the laptop OEM and get a great battery at a lower price. However, much of the third party batteries are crap. My own experience has been that almost all of the third party batteries I've tried have been short-lived (many DOA, and most died within 1-2 years), so the low price wasn't a good value. Commented May 27, 2016 at 16:24
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I won't argue that there are crap batteries out there -- but I bought batteries for my Latitude D520 (two primary and one modular, should have done it the other way if I'd known the machine would preferentially drain the modular) on price off eBay and got primaries, at least, that appear identical down to the mold marks, except for brand labels. They aren't all crap. Commented May 27, 2016 at 16:56