ThinkPad T400 battery.

[luckyone]

Hello.
I have a Thinkpad, T400 - it runs flawlessly, with 4gb of ram and a SSD inside, have no other issues besides the battery life, which is about 1 hour tops (6-cell).
I'm thinking of buying new battery(possibly 9-cell) for school needs and I wanted to ask - what is the best place to buy a battery? Few options - Ebay, Aliexpress etc. I live in East Europe (more precise - Latvia), if that is important.
I know that production date also matters, because the battery will be obviously worse after sitting in a shelf for 10 years.
Any suggestions, experience etc. is welcome.
Thank you in advance.

edit. Product ID : 2768Z1N, if it matters.

[Hans Gruber]

Welcome to the forum. My advice would be to buy a genuine 6 cell Lenovo off ebay and a generic 9 cell battery off Ebay. All my batteries are genuine Lenovo except for a 9 cell generic I purchased for my T500. If a laptop is newer, it's far easier to get a genuine Lenovo battery for a reasonable price. It's not worth spending $50 or more for a genuine Lenovo battery in my opinion.

[luckyone]

How can I know that the genuine battery isn't old? Ask the seller?
On the other hand - how can I know that the generic one isn't bad ''china'' version that will die after a month or so?
p.s. Thanks for the answer.

[Hans Gruber]

I have my original T43 battery from 2005. It has a little over 100 charging cycles and is still good for two hours or a little more on a 6 cell battery. The Lenovo Battery Manager has a cycle counter so you will know how many cycle counts it has on it. This generic T500 battery shows up as compatible in the Lenovo Battery manger with all the diagnostics just the same as a genuine Lenovo battery. It has good legs to it. Obviously it will take me a year to be able to gauge the quality of it. For $16 US dollars, I can't really complain. I got some T410 genuine Lenovo batteries for $11-$12 each. It's like playing the battery lottery. I got lucky and found some with less than 30 charging cycles.