New battery for Series 7 NP700Z5C?

Hi, I'm wondering if I can get a new battery for my NP700Z5C (ivy bridge model). Installing Windows 8.1 seems to have destroyed my battery life and I'm hoping to see if a new battery (if inexpensive) can help fix the problem... does anybody know where I can buy one?

On another note, does anybody else also experience lower battery life with windows 8.1?

 

First, what power drain are you getting when running on battery? BatteryBar can tell you. You should be in the 10W to 12W range under light usage. if more, then it's possible that some of the things broken by 8.1 (remember that Samsung have yet to release the 8.1 compatible drivers and software for your model) are using extra power.

Use BatteryBar or HWiNFO to check the battery wear in the battery properties. If it is more than about 10% then run the battery calibration in the BIOS.

Are you (inconveniently) out of warranty?

John

 

I am unfortunately out of warranty. Battery wear is at 11.4% according to batterybar. How do I see power usage? I don't see anything particular right now, but it's charging if that makes a difference. What will battery calibration do for me, out of curiosity?

Edit: Found power usage after unplugging. With minimum brightness, Skype, and 3 tabs of IE11 open, BatteryBar records 18W. That would be about 40% more power than you seem to expect, which seems inline with the drop of battery life from about 5.5 hours that I had before updating. Do you think it could be as simple as incompatible drivers now?

 

Yes, that 18W is high.

You can use Task Manager to try to figure out if the problem is higher CPU utilisation (5% total is a reasonable target for light usage) but there are other factors such as display brightness, WiFi / Bluetooth power consumption that affect the total. Is the graphics switching working properly? If the AMD CPU is running when on battery it will add to the power drain.

John

 

I have the Nvidia 640M model. But I think it is indeed drivers - loading StarCraft II detected no drivers, and I've found out that there seem to be no drivers for the HD4000. I'm not sure exactly what happened though, and Intel won't auto-detect my computer to give me generic drivers... so I'm at a loss I'm going to install the Nvidia drivers that came out today and do some more digging.

As a side note, I appear to have messed up the battery calibration as my computer went into sleep at 6% instead of running dry. Calibration went from 11.8% to 18.8%

Edit: The HD4000 was the one running. I found updated drivers from Intel's website, and the screen flashed like normal when I updated. Updating my 640M now. I'm going to probably see if I can also find chipset drivers and see if that helps.

Double edit: Graphics updated, seems to be pulling only 12W! I couldn't even get that while idled... here's to hoping it's fixed!

 

How did you do the calibration? The calibration in the BIOS just runs the computer until the battery is empty. If the computer just stopped when it thought there was charge remaining then that shows that the wear is worse than expected. Remember to fully recharge after running the battery down.

18% wear is quite significant. Are you running on battery when you could be plugged into the mains?

I hope so.

Before I forget, I should now answer your original question. The battery part number is BA43-00318A as listed by samsungparts.com. Use the part number to look for other sources.

John

 

I'm thoroughly confused... I ran the battery calibration in the BIOS after charging to 100%. In the morning, I plugged it in until full charged, but now I've gone from 18% wear to 22%

 

That suggests that the battery is wearing faster than it should do. Although you are out of warranty, Samsung claimed that the battery would have 80% of capacity after 3 years. You now have less than that capacity in less than half of 3 years. I think it would be worth trying to get a replacement for free.

John

 

Late reply, sorry, but how would you recommend doing that? Do you think I could just go through the chat online/ a phone call, or would I need to do something else? I'm hoping I don't need to send it in, but I'm pretty sure they'll want me to... they call the battery "non-user replaceable" which is a load of crap.

 

First check if the Samsung website has the claim about the battery life. My link was to Amazon which will have used material provided by Samsung, but Samsung's own claim would carry more weight. Then you would need to phone / chat and draw attention to their claim about the battery longevity (which you should note was a factor in you decision to purchase the product) then point out that you are disappointed to discover that your battery has already exceeded the advertised wear in only half the time. This indicates that the battery was inherently defective and should be replaced at Samsung's expense even though it is outside the normal warranty period.

You suggestion might well be declined in which case you would need to follow up with a letter to the higher management. In UK this problem would be covered under the latent defects clause of consumer legislation but I don't know if other countries have something similar.

The bad news is that, if Samsung agree to replace the battery, then they will most likely ask you to send the computer in.

John