Late last year, my laptop got an update, and then things started failing. When I say things, I mostly just mean the battery. Because all the other things that didn’t work were as a result of the battery failing. As someone who uses my laptop everywhere, from the bed when indoors, to a bus when travelling, a lot of things weren’t possible anymore. I was thoroughly held back by not having long battery life, and I was stressed out imagining having to buy a new laptop.
I thought a new laptop was the solution because of a couple of things:
- My laptop had no issue prior to the update.
- The battery would sometimes charge to 100% and last pretty long. Then sometimes it would refuse to charge past 50%, or 60% or, 80%.
- All of a sudden simple things like updates didn’t work. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t install an update without the laptop restarting or just going off on its own.
- Heavy apps wouldn’t run at all. You launch Adobe Premiere Pro, the setup runs, and then fails. And the laptop restarts. It was frustrating.
- Over time, the laptop became a desktop. It wouldn’t power on without being connected to the wall adapter for charging.
- Being such a thin device, I believed getting a battery replacement was impossible. Where would I start? Who would do the replacement?
Anyway, a couple of Google searches early this year showed me that it was possible to get a replacement battery. It was also pretty easy to open my laptop up and change the battery. I wouldn’t however take that risk myself. So, I just ordered the laptop battery, and got professionals to do the job.
After the changing of the battery, I used HP’s calibration tool to ensure the battery was charging optimally. The first week everything seemed really good. I was getting very long hours with my “new” device. It was crazy. I was getting better battery life with the replacement battery than I was when the laptop was brand new. All the issues above seemed solved. All apps would run, Windows 10 Updates installed okay, and it was back to being the laptop I carry around without worrying myself on carrying the charger.
The third week is when something very discomforting happened. That week, my device refused to charge past 90%. It just totally refused. And I felt like I had wasted money getting a new battery. I left it overnight, 90%. Used it for the whole day while plugged in, 90%. Two days, 90%.
I decided to run the calibration tool again, but the laptop just wouldn’t charge past 90%. So I let it be. I decided to keep using the device and ignoring that issue. It didn’t matter much since every other thing worked. The 90% full charge would still last me long hours of use, so I kept using it like that. A few weeks in, I realised the device just started doing 99% on its own. It is not 100% yes, but 99% sounds good to me. And things have been okay since March.
The great thing is I am still getting very long hours of use without charging. And every other thing is working fine, I have no complaints. Being a Core i5, 6th Gen with 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD, and having it run everything I need it to pretty well without any hiccups is pretty satisfying, and cost-cutting as well since I would need to budget for something newer had it failed completely.
I’d like to purchase Notebook 15 battery.
Where can I get an original battery?
Oh, it’s possible to change battery! My laptop can’t go 2 hours with full charge.
Where did you buy the battery from? Kenya? Imported?