Replacement Laptop Batteries

Buying a cheap replacement battery for a Dell Inspiron

The basis of this article derived from the simple fact that I needed to find a replacement laptop battery for my wife's Dell Inspiron 1501. It had been operating for increasingly shorter periods of time while on battery power and the battery utility program began displaying an error message that the laptop's battery needed to be replaced. Since it had been originally equipped with the standard 6 cell battery, I was going to take this opportunity to replace it with a 9 cell battery to extend its' run time. Consequently, the search for a new notebook battery consisted of several components: find the specs for the extended life Dell Battery; determine the sources for both an OEM and generic replacement battery; and find the best price for a replacement laptop battery. The quest had begun!

The first thing to do is to find the options and specifications for the replacement notebook battery. The Dell site indicates that two battery options are available, a 53 WHr battery and an 85 WHr battery. The price difference was not that much and we wanted to gain some more operating time from the new battery, so we narrowed our search criteria for the larger capacity battery. Dell lists the specs for the extended battery as 85 WHr, 9 cell, 11.1 Volts and a maximum recharge of about 500 cycles. It is a lithium-ion battery that has Dell Partner Nos. of either 312-0428 or 312-0460 and they indicate that the Manufacturer Part No. for it is TD347. It is sold directly by Dell for $154.99. The overall sentiment by reviewers of this battery was negative due to its' short life and high price point. We also found that the original 6-cell battery had a short life relative to other laptops and batteries we had used and cringed at paying the amount that Dell wanted since it was approximately 25-30% of the cost of the laptop when my wife purchased it. We would have reluctantly purchased this battery from Dell if there were no other options available....but there were.

I was given the assignment of finding a replacement battery for the Inspiron. I googled 'replacement laptop batteries' and found a number of sites that I visited. Probably half of them carried either the Dell OEM battery or a generic battery and since the OEM batteries were the same price or higher price than the Dell site I decided that the best buy would be in a generic battery. In about 30 minutes I found six generic batteries that had similar specs to the Dell battery. The average normalized price for the 9-cell generic laptop battery was $88.12. The price for two of these batteries was significantly lower than the others due to the fact that they had lower mAH specs so these prices were multiplied by a ratio of 'target mAH'/'supplied mAH' where the 'target mAH' was the Dell spec and the 'supplied mAH' was the rating of the offered battery. After normalization, the shipped price (these sites offered free shipping) ranged from $76.85 to $99.00. Based on the average price I found that we were able to save 43% over the Dell price by simply searching the internet for 30 minutes. Not bad at all!

Laptop Battery Price Comparison By Shopping Site

The last stop I took to look for a replacement battery for the notebook computer was eBay. I searched the laptop battery category for 'Inspiron 1501' and was surprised at the number of results that were displayed in the five minutes that it took me to navigate over to eBay, find the right category and input the search terms. Most of the results were 'Buy It Now' auctions with free shipping, and in the one case when shipping was not free I added it to the BIN cost. Again, two of the six batteries that I quickly identified were of a lower mAH rated so I normalized the price as I had done previously when shopping at the web stores. The eBay prices ranged from $54.99 to $63.05 with an average normalized price of $59.37 for a generic Dell Inspiron extended life battery with 9 cells. As Phil Rizzuto would have said - Holy Cow! That's a 32% savings over the online shops and a whopping 62% savings over the Dell price. The chart graphically displays the average normalized price for of this extended life battery by shopping site.

I looked over the eBay sellers' ratings and the warranties that they offered and sent the preferred eBay link to my wife. She immediately purchased the laptop battery and has been using it her Inspiron for six months now and has been happy with the purchase. So do a little research when shopping for a replacement laptop battery and investigate your options. You may be able to buy two or three generic batteries for the cost of one OEM battery. The price savings will depend a variety of factors, including the availablity and demand of the battery that you need to replace, but the half hour that it takes you to do the research may save you a considerable amount of money.