I dismantled the Razer Blade battery - take a look

Had to take the battery out, as it totally died (Blade 14", 2013) and refused to power on with the battery still connected.

Frustrated at not being able to find a replacement, I decided to take it apart to find out if there was anything complex inside.

https://imgur.com/a/FmzrU

Turns out there's a little circuit board in there, alongside the six very cheap-looking cells. They're held together in the black plastic frame with the outer black plastic wrap.

There's no real "so what" here, just thought you guys might find it interesting!

Cheers,

Su

 

That's how all li-ion pouch cell battery packs look like; every ultrabook, table and smartphone has the same design and 'cheap-looking' cell(s) once you peel away the plastic.

Larger and/or older laptops use 18650 cells instead of the pouch-type and cannot expand/inflate. The controller pcb (with charging circuit and overvoltage protection) is the same though, as are the voltages.

Anyway, you now know that you need six 3200 mAh pouches in order to make a new, working battery pack. Measure their height and width to make sure, but other than that these 3200mAh cells look like a good match. Swapping them only needs a soldering iron since they're all tabbed. Just be careful not to short them while you're working; all leads are 'hot'.

 

Very interesting to see the inside, too bad there are not many markings on the pouches. I am curious who is manufacturing those cells. Even though those pouches often look the same, the chemistry decides how reliable they are. Thanks for the photos!

 

Just don't puncture them pouch cells, unless you like fireworks.
One of the cells may have died (only takes one to kill a pack), or it could be a problem in the control board.
Get you a meter and check the voltages on each cell.

 

Definitely dispose of it properly. If you're in the US staples and the like have free battery disposal. Those batteries can be dangerous in the normal garbage. Especially to sanitation workers.

 

Yes it will act like Frankenstein when disposed in garbage can and torturing everybody by deciding to self destruct anytime.
The OP was really lucky the battery didn't cause any harm.

 

From my past experience with a blade pro and mamba, Razer batteries tend to degrade quickly (or in the case of my mamba, explode) so this doesn't surprise me one bit....

 

I had to replace my mamba battery several times over the 6 years i owned the mouse. Some of the batteries i owned expanded in the mouse to the point the bottom plate of the mouse scraped against the mousepad. Eventually, I had a mamba battery that blew up in the mouse a few weeks after purchase. (I was on vacation at the time)

One of them I did throw away improperly and it blew up when it was dumped in the garbage truck with a huge BOOOM! Everyone within a 2 or three house radius probably heard it. Sounded like a grenade in battlefield 1. Even the trash guys jumped.

It's really scary cuz one of these batteries easily could have taken my hand clean off and I had to actually use a flathead screw driver to pry them out of the mouse......

Razer refused at first to replace the battery or mouse and illegally refused to assist me in it's disposal. Finally they offered me a new battery. By that time i already bought a g900 cuz i was sick of the issues and read up on how dangerous an exploding battery is....



I also had a Blade Pro 2013. Had multiple battery issues and was sent multiple new replacement models in a row that did not hold a charge at all.

 

I don't understand how Razer gets away with this crap.

Samsung has a few batteries explode in their Note 7 and they recall their entire flagship product line.

Lenovo has some batteries expand in their X1 Carbon premium line and they recall all affected.

HP has a similar recall. As did Sony I think

RAZER has multiple product lines with many exploding and expanding batteries. They basically tell their customers screw and ban them from their forums if they raise an issue. They defiantly refuse refunds and basic services.

How do they have so much pull with the FCC and Tech communities? Why does tech news providers not care?

I ask this question to all that may care

@Papusan @hmscott @Vasudev @hfm @rinneh @Sumanji @Eason @darkloki @pbhenry3 @Mobius 1

 

I've got a bad battery in my gx501 too right now and my local microcenter has had a replacement battery on order for over 2 months. Microcenter even sent me the tracking # for it (which actually expired and was reset by Asus)

 

Reports of posts getting deleted on the Razer forums have been coming in for a long time, years, and so I suggest they all post their photo's and details in forums that cater to Razer outside of the Razer corporate forums, as many of those places as possible.

Also, complain to the Better Business Bureau (or foreign equivalent) in the company's headquarters state, and in the owners state / country.

The BBB is also a good resource to find recourse and remedies available to you, as well as company information:

Razer USA Ltd
https://www.bbb.org/sdoc/business-reviews/computer-parts/razer-usa-ltd-in-irvine-ca-23002547

It's also a good place to check out a new business *before* doing business.

Customer Complaints Summary
117 complaints closed with BBB in last 3 years | 47 closed in last 12 months
https://www.bbb.org/sdoc/business-r...omplaints?section=reviews&reviewtype=negative

Razer is nothing but a disappointment for so many...

 

Thought of buying Razer but due to insufficient funds I went with AW.

 

Its all because of their tight marketing, its so out there that people keep believing that their products are excellent and that the issues are one off. Their control on their message boards is helping this view. Also they do not sell a lot of units compared to other brands.

 

I never seen any problems listed in their forums aside from NBR forums.

 

Razer on Reddit is littered with problems

 

I meant their home site's forum where I see the problems listed and next day they're gone or deleted or even locked.

 

Thats because they delete it quickly. I had issues with other razer products. Posted it on their forum. It got deleted within a few hours and got banned from the forum.

 

Decision to ban people may have partially originated from me dumping video after video of issues with the Razer Blade Pro to the original Razer SBUI Dev Forums which anyone could join. It prob. affected laptop sales...

They eventually banned me and then within a month or so closed the forum down saying it was undergoing renovation and would be back up within a few weeks. Forum never went back up. Asked 6 months later, got same half-witted, pre-scripted answers. All ads on their site relating to the promise of continual software development and support for SBUI were taken down.

Oh and they once tried to charge me for repairs that I told they were going to cover, and my laptop was held by them for almost a month. If I had to pay I would have also had to pay for them to store my laptop for a month which would have been like $3 a day or something crazy like that. Complete ripoff. What company tries to charge users to repair a year+ old laptop they said they would repair for free and also charges for storage of the unit? (I had so many issues I was getting replacements for replacements for replacements which ended up with me stringing along replacement ~60 day warranties for an additional year) and sends them a bill for ~ $1700? I could have bought a more powerful and dependable computer (Alienware, Clevo, MSI, etc) for that price. No repair, or even completely new motherboard should ever cost ~$1700 -- It had only 8gb Transcend ram, an oem 500gb ssd, and a 765m for crying out loud. Shouldn't have been quoted more than $500 max.

And one time I sent it in they were logged in and playing TF2 on my steam account!

 

From my experiences, i'm pretty sure they usually don't test components. Most of the time they know its probably some software glitch, so they wipe it and send it right back to you.

I was on the phone once with a tech from Razer who actually tried to reproduce my issue and he completely fried the keyboard on his test unit Razer Blade Pro. Turned out it didn't update or flash firmware right or something and the testing unit died.

 

They also had a habit of blaming software issues on the Windows OS when mostly it due to horrible and incompatible driver/software support.



They even once told me I had two operating systems installed which was causing issues. I never dual-booted my blade pro or ran anything other than the stock windows 8/8.1/10 it came with.

Dead on arrival battery issue and PSU clicking (video): https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!ANS4brzE6x9iq08&cid=E911393877AD0EE3&id=E911393877AD0EE3!320341&parId=E911393877AD0EE3!134178&o=OneUp


I have like an entire folder in my Onedrive devoted for razer bugs. So many videos and bugs I cant keep track of where they all are, strewn about throughout my Onedrive. lol.


Honestly despite ALL the problems I had, I still loved my blade pro 2013. When it worked it was amazing and the SBUI was awesome. It did, however, eventually get to the point where the laptop was just embarrassing. My friends started calling it the "$3K Paperweight", which is essentially what it became. Honestly, Razer, no matter how cool your products might look its never good PR if they don't work or fail publicly (eg. at a robotics tournament in front of several hundred spectators).
Was it worth $3.3K? Definitely not.
Would I buy again if price was reduced to reflect performance and reliability? Yes. But, like any future Razer Product I buy (if I ever do buy one), I wouldn't treat it as anything but a novelty with the expectation of failure/issues. I would use mostly another laptop or tablet I could rely on.

 

A. It was a brand new battery.
B. The battery destroyed the mouse.
A good cs team would have at least offered a replacement battery (as this battery was in warranty) if not also a replacement mouse.... See below:

 

I have also chatted with one of the SBUI/Razer Devs online. He developed for the SBUI but was never actually owned a Blade Pro or Deathstalker ultimate.

Sort of makes it difficult to write code when you don't have access to the product it's going to run on. Pretty counter-intuitive.....

I may have copies of some of the apps devs created but were never released by razer for the SBUI and were 'lost' when the forum closed. If anyone wants copies, hmu and I'll try to to dig em up. One if the apps actually had bf3 integration. Another I think worked with VLC player.

Anyways, I still got a brand new replacement blade pro 2013 sitting in a box. Never even set the thing up. Was too frustrated and had switched over to a gt80s.

 

Hi Sumanji and all,

Just saw this thread by chance. I also have a Razer Blade 14 from 2013, and its battery was pretty weared. I bought a new one a few months ago from this website for around 90 euros (the price seems to have dropped since).
http://www.battery-store.eu/laptopcomputer/1004078.htm

Took about a month to arrive, great quality, no issues (yet?), 70000 mWh.
VERY happy about it as I now have a ~5-6 hours battery for Office/web browsing, compared to the bad readings and 2 hours from my old battery.

Definitely worth it if you want to give you Razer Blade a new youth. My now nearly 5 years-old machine still rocks solid for regular use or games like Civ, OW, Total War etc. With its new battery, don't even know if I should change in the near future ...

Hope it helps. Regards,

 

Thought I'd chime in and say that I also had quality issues with the OG Mamba. The battery in mine didn't explode, but it expanded enough for the battery tray to pop out and fall off. The mouse had almost exclusively been used in wired mode, and when the incident happened, the warranty had run out by mere days. The RMB also wore out prematurely, needing several clicks to register and having virtually no feedback. Bought a Roccat Kone XTD as a replacement, and it's built like a tank in comparison, so I still use it today.

 

Switched to a Roccat Kone XTD as well after 2 deathadders prematurely dying. The Kone XTD is already going strong for 5 years now......

 

These flat battery packs are sold en masse on ebay and on Hobbyking amongst others. Even if you buy one of the more preium models they still suffer with bad "cells", typically in my case the fist and the last on 6 cell packs (3700mAh each). One theory why it was happening was the excess heat used to solder the very thick leads onto the first and last cells whereas the interconnecting tabs were welded at the factory. You cannot easily solder on those tabs because they suck the heat like no other and you need excessive heat which probably degrades the first and last cells. If you buy the cells individually and try to put them together at home you may then also ruin them as well.

I would advise extreme caution when messing with these cells the tabs are relatively close together and when stacking them it is easy to accidentally short them or have them the wrong way! There is little internal resistance in these cells and any short will easily melt the wires or worse.

And if they appear swollen and soft they need to be disposed of too.

 

hello guys.
some time ago i bought a chinese batery, but the cable doesnt reach the mb connector, soo i disassembly bouth batteries, and swap the cells.

mines was 3200mAh and one of them were puffed, and the chinese cells was 4050mAh.
Passed one month and the baterie still work ... so i hope for the best.
follow some pics


chinese betty, i broke the cable trying to connect




side by side comparison


both boards, the chinese one is simple, but mine has a ampere measure components and a temp sens





chinese cells



original cells has the blue tape, and different sizes between them, but same capacity


end result, i fit some foam to fill the spaces

 

and i have more or less 3 hours on watching youtube. screen on low brightness

also if you want me test the battery, let me know what program to use.