Thinkpads Forum

Hello, new to the forum.

I was thinking of picking up a T61p and refurbishing it for personal use for school, however, the big one is the battery and the only ones that are readily available are the Chinese eBay batteries for $15~ USD that don't last very long. I was wondering how you guys replaced your batteries with a quality one?

Thanks!

We look for genuine T60/T61 batteries made by Panasonic.
6-cell: 92P1139
9-cell: 42T4620 or 92P1133

I bought my new original T60 9c from notebooskbilliger.de in April. It's a Sanyo but it was manufactured in 2014 and is holding up pretty well. Still has over 90% capacity.

I sold some Panasonic 9-cells from 11-2009 in 07-2014 (almost 5 years later) and they still held over 98%.
The worst Panasonic I had also dated from 11-2009, I sold it in 08-2013 with 403 cycles and still holding 90.94%.
Forget about Sanyo and Sony.

Agreed... the 6 cell Sanyo I got with my T61 was babied since I've had it (storing at 40-70% charge, periodically fully charging/discharging, probably 120 cycles) and it's down to about 60% new capacity - granted it is over 8 years old now. Some Panasonic cells I have for a 14" T61/T400 which were made about the same time still hold about 95% new capacity, with as many or substantially more cycles - and almost certainly less tender loving care. I've also seen good things with the newer LG batteries for the T/W x10 and x20 series... same deal with Sanyo though - always either dead or much poorer condition than Panasonic or LG.

Panasonic is the best by far, but then of course it's harder to find them. The newer Sanyo's are pretty decent, as is LGC. Sony however is pure crap.

Newer Sanyos and Panasonics are probably the same, as the two companies merged their battery production some time ago.

The official Lenovo ones are so ridiculously expensive, so I bought the cheapest ones I could find on eBay. They worked fine, except they're actually slightly larger than the real ones so my T60p won't dock properly if it's in, or even at all!

Also, the official Lenovo-branded ones I have are Sony and Sanyo!

Where do you buy these Panasonic ones? Just on eBay or is there a known seller?

I got lucky a couple months ago and hit up eBay for a 9 cell for my T60. The seller posted a photo of Power Manager details showing the capacity and manufacturer... a Panasonic from 2006 with about 96% new capacity and a dozen cycles for $25.

I doubt that kind of listing appears often, but it goes to show it does happen. Keep an eye out and you'll eventually get what you're looking for.

How do you tell the manufacturer before you buy?

I searched for the model numbers RBS posted and found this on eBay http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Laptop-Battery-f ... SwDk5UHnJM
It looks like a knockoff to me. I only Lenovo-branded and questionable third-party batteries on Amazon and eBay, but none of them are marked as Panasonic.

Ever heard of the word genuine?
Include that in your search...

thomase13 wrote:<snip>... but none of them are marked as Panasonic.

And you'll probably not find anything in the auction description that states who made the cells that are inside the pack. Your average eBay sellers do not have the knowledge, expertise or dedication to providing esoteric details like this. Most eBay sellers also have a tendency to list multiple FRUs in their title and description as a way of gaining more visibility. Unless you run into a seller that includes a snapshot of the battery showing the FRU on the label (and it's a photo of the actual item and not a stock picture) or a screenshot of the Power Manager details like theterminator93 mentioned above, the best you can do is to try to weed out knockoffs. To do that, use a search string something like this:

(ibm,lenovo,thinkpad) (original,oem,genuine,factory,panasonic) (t60,t60p,t61,t61p) battery (92p1139,92p1133,42t4620)

Note that you can exclude some sellers that actually have what you want simply because they neglect to include some of the strings in the second set of parentheses. You could also include a maximum price you're comfortable with spending but that can eliminate a seller who is selling more than one battery. Those lot sales could be a good bargain depending on how many systems you have or if you want to have a spare, fully-charged battery ready to go.

So I have searched using the word "genuine" appended to my search as well as the "(ibm,lenovo,thinkpad) (original,oem,genuine,factory,panasonic) (t60,t60p,t61,t61p) battery (92p1139)" string (I'm only interested in the 6-cell battery since I dock it daily) and found nothing that looks very genuine. I also checked the actual Panasonic Web site and they don't list any of their laptop batteries there. This is the most legit-looking thing I've found: http://www.thinkpad-parts.com/92P1139-Thinkpad.html
And maybe this: http://www.atlaptopbattery.co.uk/origin ... ttery.html

What do you think? Perhaps I should just wait?
I have the 3-cell battery filling up my UltraBay right now which currently holds a longer charge than my main 6-cell battery!

thomase13 wrote:
What do you think? Perhaps I should just wait?

Well, I'd omit word "panasonic" from your search to begin with. Panasonic site can't offer you anything, since these batteries were produced for Lenovo.

Both of those batteries that you've found are seriously overpriced for a 6-cell IMO.

If your machine is running OK, take your time and wait for a decent deal on a Panasonic battery, preferably from a known trusted source.

Keywords genuine and OEM seem to help, I check used since most real OEM batteries
are going to be used unless you're looking for new old stock which are usually very
expensive. Obviously, the majority of clone batteries are going to be new.

I lucked out and got a Panasonic in one of my purchases.

You can ask the seller to check in Lenovo Power Manager for the brand of the cells,
some won't bother but I'm surprised by how many at least _try_ to answer questions.