Laptop Li Ion Battery Shelf Life

[benjamming]

What is the shelf life of unused laptop batteries? The reason I ask is that I thought about buying a 12-cell battery from Toshiba now with my laptop. That way I would have a supposedly good battery when this 8-cell Li Ion dies. It doesn't appear that laptop batteries last reliably more than 3 years or so, & it can be somewhat difficult to find true OEM batteries after that time.

Thoughts?

 

[Towncivilian]

I believe if you keep around a 40% charge and store it in the fridge the battery will last longer.

 

[Hermann]

The GF and I have a 7 years old laptop. We did not buy the extra battery. The original 6 cell gave us about 5 years of great service. When it no longer would last more than a hour, we did some searching and found the original Dell battery for about 1/2 of what Dell wanted. It was even the optional 9 cell. It has worked great for 2 years. It will last 4 hours running screen at full brightness and with wi-fi turned on. If it was me I would wait. Not had much luck with Li Ion that get little use. My camera uses a rechargeable Li Ion and I bought 2 extras OE's but the rarely used ones didn't last very long.

 

[Nightmare]

Unless you just really use batteries alot, and need a spare to switch during extended times away from a A/C outlet, it isn't worth buying a spare.

 

[PandaBear]

From what I remember back in the late 90s, Li-Ion battery loses 20% of capacity each year, so that means a reasonable use life is probably 3-5 years.

 

[buickman50401]

Originally Posted By: Towncivilian
I believe if you keep around a 40% charge and store it in the fridge the battery will last longer.

Yep. 40 to 60% charge and stored somewhere south of 60 degrees will help extend the life.

 

[Cujet]

I'm finding that the Li laptop batteries have an ultimate life limit of 5 years. At that point, they are really no good, whether used or not.

 

[benjamming]

Well, since I don't live in a fridge or meat cooler, storing the battery below 60°F is not practical.

Cujet,

So you've had Li laptop batteries unused that wouldn't really work the 1st time 3-5 years later?

 

[Rand]

their capacity drops even when not being used.

my laptop is currently at 73% normal charge capacity (when fully charged vs new) its 2 years old.

 

[CBR.worm]

LIon batteries should be charged occasionally during storage to maintain 60-80%. They self discharge when they sit.

They will maintain nearly full design capacity for less than a year in storage or in use. Depending on how fast your laptop drains and charges, and what it's edv and ecv are, the number of charge cycles can vary drastically. after a year they have typically dropped below the 80% of initial capacity and drop pretty quickly after that. If you can keep the batteries between 20 and 80% and charge/discharge slowly they can last a long time.

The older NiMh batteries could last many years, 5-7 was not uncommon.

 

[youdontwannaknow]

If Li-Ion batteries are so sensitive about shelf life then it begs the question - Is there a date stamp or anything that tells when exactly the battery was manufactured ? Like the WWYY stamp on tires.
How can one tell its not been sitting around for a while and you are getting a battery thats already lost X% of its life without even being used ?

 

[Colt45ws]

I dont know. I ordered a new 9 cell battery for my T500 and it was 1 year, 3 months old already when I popped it in. It was at 6% charge. Its been a few cycles now, and if I allow it to charge to 100% itll still go back up to over the design capacity. Most of the time I have the power manager keep it at 90% or so.

 

[Nyquist]

A general rule of thumb with many notebook Li batteries is that you get around 300 charge/discharge cycles before performance declines.

 

[Colt45ws]

Probably heavily depends on how its treated. I bought a new battery because the old 6-cell was down to 60% of original capacity though had only ~110 cycles on it.
I know my brother's old Acer battery is down to basically UPS status. It will not sustain the machine for more than 20 minutes even with heavy power saving enabled. It probably has less than a dozen cycles on it I would guess.

 

[Rand]

I' at 71% capacity(at 100% charge) after 2y3m

I now manage the battery to only charge below 85% and to stop at 90% charge.. this increases the battery "life"

topping off to 100% charge constantly will hurt the battery's lifespan.

 

[daves87rs]

Mine is now 4 years old on my gateway, and the battery is pretty much toast.

Haven't decided what kind of battery to get yet..since they go from 30-150 bucks...