Thinkpads Forum

The internal battery for my T480 is only at ~64% of its original capacity and it has been difficult to find information on reliable 3rd party replacement batteries as most of the information I have found is for people in the US, when I'm in Northern Ireland. Im not able to get a battery directly from Lenovo as they are asking for £105 for an OEM replacement, when my budget is only £50, so I've accepted that Im not getting an OEM battery that isnt severely degraded off of eBay.
A lot of posts on the thinkpad subreddit recommended KingSener batteries but in the comments people say how the batteries did not last more than a few weeks. Some people also recommended getting batteries from Duracell Direct but its a lot more expensive than the KingSener. Are KingSener batteries reliable or should I just go with the Duracell Direct battery, or is there a better alternative that I don't know about

boldiegoldie wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 26, 2024 7:24 pm

The internal battery for my T480 is only at ~64% of its original capacity and it has been difficult to find information on reliable 3rd party replacement batteries as most of the information I have found is for people in the US, when I'm in Northern Ireland. Im not able to get a battery directly from Lenovo as they are asking for £105 for an OEM replacement, when my budget is only £50, so I've accepted that Im not getting an OEM battery that isnt severely degraded off of eBay.

Welcome to the forum.

64% of the original capacity for a battery on a ~6-year old laptop is pretty good. Now is absolutely not the time to bother with this. You may buy a new battery that will degrade within 1 year to the same level that your current one has now, or worse. And it can happen with a genuine Lenovo, a counterfeit, or a legit third-party battery.

When it degrades to ~20% - then I'd think about replacement.

Thanks for the advice, I was looking into this because it only gets about 3 or so hours of battery life under normal usage and just assumed that the batteries should be replaced, and the laptop occasionally shuts off when the external battery is below 10% and the internal is at near full capactiy, although that may be caused by bad calibration. I guess the 2x24Wh config didnt have the best battry life out of the box

You can use Lenovo Vantage, or if you wish to avoid its bloat, BatteryInfoView to view the status of each battery.

How much juice does the external 24Wh have? If it's very low, you could consider replacing it with an identical or larger (48Wh/72Wh) battery. That would make the machine heavier and bulkier, but should give significant improvement of battery life, and you don't need to open it up.

If the laptop suddenly shuts off, though, it may mean that the battery is faulty. Or it might be displaying incorrect capacity. I would suggest a gauge reset on both of them just to calibrate.

The external battery must have been replaced at some point before i got the laptop as it only had 110 cycles on it at 70% capacity, according to Windows in-built battery report. The laptop only shuts off when it wakes from sleep and when the external battery is below 10%, which makes me think its bad calibration and windows thinks it has more capacity than it does, leading to it using the external battery even when its dead before the PowerBridge drivers can kick over to the internal battery. I used commercial vantage to calibrate the internal battery overnight and I currently have it calibrating the external battery.

I have looked into getting the 61+/61++ batteries before, but the extra thickness wouldn't be ideal, (even though it would help with cooling) so I was only going to get one as a last resort.