Thinkpads Forum

Hi everyone,

Sorry in advance if this has been covered already. I did try searching first.

I have an X300 with a failed battery. I'd like a replacement, but not for the exorbitant prices charged by Lenovo for replacement parts. I've had success buying third-party, non-Lenovo batteries from eBay for my T60 and T61, but I've also heard pretty bad stories.

Does anyone have any experience with such replacement batteries for their X300(s)?

Thanks!

Hello,

I don't own a x300 but I have replaced several batteries, this is my experience so far:

The production date is the most important factor when it comes to performance of the battery, especially how many cycles you can run. E.g. I have had batteries that could easily endure 6xx cycles, while others only went as far as 3xx cycles - both cases with Lenovo OEM. The low cycle batteries have always been more than 2 years old. The death of the OEM batteries has always been abrupt; e.g. the battery works fine and Power Manager says good health, I power down the laptop and at the next power up with only battery the laptop won't start - plugging in the wall charger and booting the OS and Power Manager says that the battery is dead.

With generic batteries I have not yet experienced the battery dying, but after some 600 cycles the charge capacity is significantly reduced - max 30 minutes of use at 100% charge. The newer the battery the later the charge reduction, e.g. battery produced within 6 month of purchase would loose charge capacity (reduced to around 85-90% of the original capacity) after 400 cycles while old batteries (2 years) lost charge capacity after 300 cycles.

If you can get your hand on a good generic battery, then it is as good as the OEM. By good I mean one that is produced recently. I have had very good experience dealig wnith http://stores.ebay.de/de-zhaoyu , and have only heard good about http://myworld.ebay.de/handy-foto-pc/?_ ... 4340.l2559

My latest replacement was of the 8 cell for my x200 with a generic 8 cell from de-zhaoyu, the battery works great and Power Manager can control the battery as if it were an OEM.

Thanks for your thoughts smh. I went ahead and bought this because I couldn't bring myself to be patient. Hopefully it works ok - I don't really expect too much for the price. I might go back to the sellers you've had good experiences with if need be. What you say about the different batteries, their age, and how they fail, in your experience, is very interesting.