M6400 Battery life / capacity after 5 months...

Got my M6400 in early December.

Now, using RMClock I note that my fully charged capacity of the battery is now only 85% of the designed capacity. (72361mWh out of 86580 mWh)

What does everyone else get?

If I get to 75% or less I will push for a new battery - battery warranty is only 12 months, but if you get to 3/4 capacity within 12 months they usually replace.

M

 

Have they replaced it before? When I talked to Dell, they said they don't cover loss of battery charge.

 

Yes. I don't know what the policy is in the rest of the world, but here in the UK we are protected by pretty stringent consumer laws.

On my D820 the battery got to 65% after 10 months - so they replaced it. Supplying a new piece of kit, it is supposed to last a "reasonable" amount of time, and that is deemed to be 12 months on consumables like batteries - and 65% of charge is pretty much broken.

 

Dell will replace if DCP or bios says battery needs to be replaced within 12month. In US& Canada at least. They will run serial # of battery to determine how old battery is.

 

I read somewhere about calibrating a battery, or re-calibrating a battery, so the OS could read its capacity correctly. This involved disabling the automatic shutdown in the OS, running the battery down completely, recharging it completely, then the OS would know what voltages amounted to fully charged and fully discharged.

As for actual battery life though, this varies a lot. We have 4 Dells in our extended family. Two of them lost a lot fo battery capacity in the first year or two, the third one maintains very good capacity after over 4 years, the 4th machine is only 4 months old so we don't know about it yet.

 

My E6400's battery is down to 91% of the nominal fully charged capacity after 7 months but it started at 96%.

John

 

Mine one is a 6 cells E6400 battery.
After 7 months, it is currently: 50572 / 56610mWh = 89%