For ASUS laptop battery from eBay at 2021 – Technical details & capacity issues

[Kiriakos GR]

When I am up to buy a Lithium battery pack, most of times I am looking at the German market place, by the hope that I would get fresher ones, than what I will find at the local market.
Trading speed in German market this is higher and fresh imported goods from China they arrive more frequently.
In this occasion I did shopped a battery for my ASUS laptop, the eBay seller appeared registered at German eBay with German VAT, but in the end this was a front man of one Chinese factory.

The battery was sold as 5500 mWh regarding appearance, and it came really fast with DHL speed carrier.
Production date, January 2021.

My thought was that as total fresh, I can use it right away, and I did power on the laptop with it, without charging it.
Charge level appeared at 65% and just 30 minutes later the laptop suddenly shutdown without any warnings.
No low battery, No critical battery warnings, nothing.

My first thought was that I am in deep shit, as this battery pack reacted as totally unbalanced and it battery cells probably too old or damaged.

By the use of software, I did succeed to read battery controller information’s.
The factory using a single battery controller this capable to handle up to 57200 mWh measured capacity.
Then the factory it may install cells of total capacity 4400 or 5500 mWh.
Battery controller device name will reveal actual cells capacity selection, for example at the description K52F-44 the number 44 this translates to cells at 4400 mWh.

Therefore it is logical conclusion, when software this reads battery controller information as 57200 mWh, and battery pack to be built with 4400 mWh cells, the number of WEAR Level to appear as tremendous.
25% Wear in my case.

If you are an electrician or be capable to think as one, then you need to reevaluate the facts and to correct manually the measuring error.

I did succeed to balance this battery pack after four discharge / charge cycles.
Them I did remove from my thoughts the misleading battery label about 5500 mWh capacity.
Then I did manual calculation of stored capacity at the cells so to calculate WEAR level according to new Max of 4400 mWh.
And the new WEAR level this is approximately at 3%. 


My fresh acquired as used laptop, this is ASUS X52JU – SX335V (02-2011).
Original battery was dead but made with Japanese Cells.

This new adventure with this specific battery, it did boost my curiosity so to also discover the specific battery controller charging curve.
I did allot of notes hand writing because regular multimeter they cannot be used here for data logging.
And here are my notes, when batteries pack this is totally depleted at 1.5% of charge. Then rebooted and monitoring started at 5%.

5% of battery charge / charging current 3.10A
8%    / 2.5A
70%  / 1.89A
75%  / 1.72A  ---- 60 Min
80%  / 1.57A
85%  / 1.39A
90%  / 1.12A
94%  / 930mA  ---- 1H 30Min
95.1% / 800mA
96.8%  / 640mA -- 1H 39 Min
98.9%  / 380mA  --1H 58 Min
99%  / 258mA
Lower current 181mA
100% -- charging off – battery status high ---- 1H 59 Min

Those numbers alone they are the biggest proof to me, that specific battery controller this is factory programed for 4400 mWh.

And I am now feeling finally relaxed, by knowing the truth and by having collects 9 Euro refund, because of the misleading label from the seller.

[Gianluca]

Thanks for this testimony, I bought 2 batteries for 2 Acer and HP notebooks.
https://www.duracelldirect.co.uk/
Full loads allow me to use the notebook for about 2 hours with the power saving on .
Regards

[Kiriakos GR]

Thanks for this testimony, I bought 2 batteries for 2 Acer and HP notebooks.
https://www.duracelldirect.co.uk/
Full loads allow me to use the notebook for about 2 hours with the power saving on .
Regards

You are welcome! 
UK due Brexit this is now out of the game, import fees are now active.

On-battery time this has to do with laptop hardware configuration along Windows power management settings.
Battery Low & Battery critical alerts, they can be adjusted to lower than default.
I did that to my laptop so to be able to bring the battery down to 0% if possible.
Battery controller actual Low state this is 525 mWh but my cells can come down to 1000 mWh and the laptop collapses.

I am now thinking that after another new 5 cycles (10 in total) this battery pack it might improve or go to worst, but what ever it happens, this would be permanent.