[REVIEW] 12-Cell 10,400mah AAO Battery

Discussion in 'For Sale / Wanted' started by Swarvey, Oct 5, 2010.

  1. Swarvey

    Swarvey Moderator

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    Hey guys. I've just received my 12-Cell battery from the eBay seller batteries4laptop_pc. So here's a quick review of the overall purchase and the battery itself.

    First off, the seller has pretty good feedback and they seem to offer 3 year warranty on most, if not all their AAO batteries. So I felt pretty safe purchasing from them. The price was good too. I was looking at approximately $35AUD to replace my original 5,200mah battery (from the same seller), but if I was replacing the battery, I might as well upgrade the capacity too. So I opted for the 10,400mah battery which I bought with "buy-it-now" for $58.85AUD. It was only $20 or so more, but double the capacity of my original so I took it. Postage appears to be free on the majority of their batteries.

    *EDIT* Price has not gone up at all, I later realised that I'd accidentally clicked into a battery for another model, the one I bought is still $58AUD

    I bought the battery and payed via PayPal on the 24th September 2010, received it today 6th October 2010. So postage from Hong Kong took 8 business days. Which in my experiences is pretty good, (I'm still waiting on 2 items from Hong Kong bought the same day). Packaging was more than adequate for the battery. The battery itself was in an anti-static bag, padded with foam, wrapped in bubble-wrap, then put in a bubble-wrap lined bag for freight. Needless to say the battery arrived without a scratch.

    I was a bit taken-aback by the dimensions and weight of the battery. It's approximately 2-3 times the size of a 6 cell, and must weigh about a kilogram. (I'll weigh and measure it's dimensions when it's finished charging). But long story short, it's a pretty beefy battery. It looks like it could hold 3 or 4 C-Cell batteries inside it.

    So for now it's on charge. I'm using BatteryBar to help me in summing it up. Mainly because this program reports with decent figures regarding battery capacity, lifetime and wear, instead of just the percentages and rough estimates that Windows 7 uses. I'm running it through a fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate (because I was testing the waters with AHCI and a faulty install disk the other day, so had to reinstall 7) and a fresh install of BatteryBar. Initially it reported 78% charge, which is understandable from the factory. I then left the house for about 20 mins to drop my son off at school, checked the AAO and it reports approximately 1hr 48mins until a full charge is achieved.

    Okay, so here we go, the battery has just achieved it's first full charge. Upon removing the charger, BatteryBar is now reporting 99.0%. Hopefully that will settle down and the charger being connected does not account for 1% of the overall battery level. I'll wait until BatteryBar has completed it's calibration before I start worrying about that. The main things I'm looking for here is battery wear (now and over the next few days) and full lifetime. So far so good, there's no initial battery wear at all, so I don't think I've been ripped off with cheap, faulty cells. But that won't show up until it's been through a good few full charge and discharge cycles. I'll be leaving my critical battery action on "Do Nothing" as long as I can as I don't like to rely on Windows battery reporting. My old 6 cell would continue for about half an hour at "critical" levels.

    As for time remaining, I've been editing this post since disconnecting the power and it's taken me approximately 5 minutes to get this far. Time remaining on the battery is still at 12hrs 41 minutes. It hasn't changed since unplugging. My power scheme is set to High Performance (as always), WiFi is constantly on for my internet and I'm not exactly letting the computer sit idle. I've actually just done a screen shot of BatteryBar with it. See below.
    [​IMG]

    I'm finishing up editing this post for now, but I'll be back with more information. As of right now the battery has run down to 12hrs 38mins. Pretty standard for my setup atm.

    Update: As of 9pm last night, my battery still had over an hour remaining, this is great because it had been left on ALL day. As I previously mentioned, the battery is considerably larger than the 6-cell, but it's not really noticeable when using the machine.It rises the rear of the machine and rakes the keyboard a bit more, which I actually find makes the machine more comfortable and more stable. The only down side to its size that I can see so far, is that it's not clipped into the machine as solidly as my old one. It sort of flops about a little bit. But considering most people wouldn't drag their AAO around as much as I do, it shouldn't be a bother. You don't really notice the weight all that much either.

    Pros:
    * I get at least a full 12 hours out of this battery before even wanting to put it on charge
    * The price seemed right
    * Construction of the battery itself is pretty good, very rigid, very solid
    * Available in a few different colours
    * 3 year warranty
    * BatteryBar reports OEM capacity as 108,425mWh, but actual capacity is 112,421mW
    * Netbook seems to run cooler due to more airspace under the machine
    * Charge it over night, use it all day

    Cons:
    * The battery does weigh considerably more
    * It could probably have been designed with better looks
    * Connection to the AAO is a TINY bit sloppy but that's expected from the weight of the battery

    It's not time for a final thought yet, and I wouldn't suggest buying one just yet either. As we all know, buying cheap batteries from Asian countries in general can be a hit and miss affair. even though the seller offers a short money back period and a 3 year warranty, I'm going to continue reporting the battery's wear for a week or so just to be safe. Fingers crossed I won't start seeing any measurable amount of battery wear for quite some time.

    Day 4 - Well I've now had the battery for three nights, it has been discharged down to about 2 hours left, twice, and completely charged 3 times (4 times including the initial charge when I first got it). But it's now reporting 7.3% wear already. Needless to say I'm not happy about it. I've already lost 2 hours of lifetime. I've sent a message to the eBay seller. Lets see what he says. Otherwise, yesterday I did upgrade my BIOS to v1.28 which supposedly "improves battery charging performance", and I accidentally let it get to a complete 0% level where the laptop simply powered off. I full charged from there. Could these two things cause 7.3% of battery wear overnight?
    [​IMG]
    Day 6
    Well the seller got back to me, initially he didn't understand the question, then when I mentioned I was getting about 12 hours out of the battery, they tried to cover their arse by saying they expect you only get 4 hours or so out of their 12 cells. Anyway, after sorting out the miss communications, it turns out they're still very willing to abide by their three year warranty. So that's a plus. Another plus is that after a full charge, following the one that cause 7.3% wear, BatteryBar is now reporting 0% wear and a total lifetime of 10 hours 26 minutes. Keep in mind that I'm using the "High Performance" power profile. I'd expect to gain the extra 2 hours back if I changed over to a more laptop-friendly, "Power Saver" profile, but hey, I now get 10+ hours out of my battery without power being drained from the CPU in order to maintain a decent lifetime on the battery.
    [​IMG]
    Okay, its been quite a while now. Have had the 12 cell running in my AAO D250 for a few weeks and I now feel safe in saying the battery is worthwhile. The added weight from the larger battery is a non-issue. It is a heavy battery, but you have to expect that from a battery that has nearly twice the capacity of a 6 cell. As previously mentioned, I am running full time on the High Performance power plan. I also leave my AAO switched on and connected to WiFi virtually all day. The only exception being, if I go out, I close the lid, putting it into standby. The battery lasts on average, just under 10 hours. As much as I haven't tested it, if I put the machine into a Power Saving power plan, I should get approximately 12 hours out of it.

    So, as far as I'm conserned, I'm glad I bought the 12 cell and the seller seems more than willing to make good on their 3 year warranty. Given that it's only been just under a month since I started using it, I still feel somewhat justified in saying it's definitely a go-er and worth buying.
    Question time... GO!
     
    Swarvey, Oct 5, 2010
    #1
  2. Swarvey

    Rohaq

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    I'm going go be keeping an eye on your progress in this thread, seeing as I'm after a higher capacity battery for my AAO too :)
     
    Rohaq, Oct 24, 2010
    #2
  3. Swarvey

    Swarvey Moderator

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    Well it's been nearly a month since I started using this battery. I'm still pretty darn happy with it, but starting to wonder just how trustworthy BatteryBar (Pro version because I enabled my free trial) is with regards to measuring the battery. It's now saying my battery's full lifetime is 10hours and that I have 2.9% battery wear. The battery wear has been stable over the last week or so. It's now also reporting that the total capacity of the battery is 108,425mWh with it's OEM capacity at 105,239mWh. I guess this is where the battery wear kicks in. Either way, I'm still leaving it on all day unless I go out (in which case I close the lid, putting the machine into standby). I'm also permanently connected via WiFi to my router all day and have even been using Bluetooth to connect to my temporary mobile phone.

    Overall I'm still happy with the battery and it's figures seem stable. I still believe I've got what I paid for.
     
    Swarvey, Oct 29, 2010
    #3
  4. Swarvey

    Swarvey Moderator

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    Well it's been well over a month and I'm still happy with this battery. Just a few points:
    1. If I charge my AAO overnight while it's in sleep mode the battery loses about an hour of lifetime, in other words, a full charge lasts about 9 hours.
    2. If I charge the AAO overnight with the system running, but with WiFi off, I get a good 10 hours of lifetime... weird
    3. it's already earned itself a battery-wear level of about 5.6%, having said that, I still get a good 10 hours out of it.
     
    Swarvey, Nov 21, 2010
    #4
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