Replacement batteries or restuffing Dell laptop battery?

N8N

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Apr 26, 2013
Messages
1,241
Hi all

Have a Dell laptop that I trash picked and would like to turn into a low budget music player (using a USB DAC that I already have.)

Battery is dead.

Can anyone recommend an aftermarket rebuilder that isn't expensive but whose batteries won't crap out in a few months?

Alternately, source for 18650s suitable for restuffing, and any tips?

Thanks!
 

SilverFox

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Joined
Jan 19, 2003
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Location
Bellingham WA
Hello N8N,

At this point replacement battery packs are inexpensive. You may just want to do a search for your particular computer and pick up a replacement from someplace like Walmart.

Tom
 

N8N

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Apr 26, 2013
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1,241
They are inexpensive, but looking on e.g. Amazon there is a shocking percentage of reviews where battery packs failed to work either out of the box or after a very short period of time in service which makes me think that "remanufacturers" are just identifying dead cells and replacing only those with used ones. That was my experience the one and only time I tried it as well; I ended up locating a spare battery that I'd got when purchasing the laptop that had been in a closet for 5 years, it worked better than the cheap replacement. Any pointers to battery packs that don't suck would be greatly appreciated.
 

Gauss163

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Oct 20, 2013
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USA
Indeed, most of the 3rd party replacement battery packs are very poor quality (and possibly unsafe). There is really no good solution unless you think you can perform open-pack surgery on a used pack, i.e. replace the cells while keeping everything powered. But an additional problem with Dell packs is that some of them have firmware that disables the battery after some fixed number of cycles, even if it is still healthy (there was a class action lawsuit due to this).

Another possibility is that you could use an external battery, either into the 19V input, or into the battery jack. In the latter case you will need to charge the battery externally, and the laptop will likely not be able to monitor the foreign battery through the smart battery interface (theoretically it could but Dell's highly proprietary software rejects anything that it thinks is non-Dell - along with Dell batteries from other models).

What model is the laptop?
 
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