3 Year Batteries
Interesting announcement last week from one of our competitors offering what I think is the industry’s first three-year battery. If the battery fails during its three year lifecycle, you are allowed one replacement. (Most standard warranties offer one year battery replacement coverage.) Today this three-year battery is a consumer notebook option, but will likely become available on business notebooks soon.
The 1,000 cycle battery from another competitor is a bit of a misnomer. It still only has the standard one-year warranty that everyone else in the industry uses. I’ve been posing the question that if the company is so confident in its performance, why does it not increase the standard warranty to two or three years?
Batteries are consumable items. They wear out. Most customers I’ve spoken with agree that their batteries lose about 1/3 of their “new” capacity every year they are in use. Thus, a battery that is about three years old does not really hold much electricity compared to its original design capacity.
If you read this blog regularly, you know that I mention our battery charging technology from time to time and how we minimize our “drop off” over the lifecycle of a ThinkPad. In my own experience, I use the ThinkPad Power Manager defaults and only lose about 10% capacity per year.
There is not really much magic technology inside these multiple year batteries. If you study the specifications carefully, you’ll notice that they have diminished capacity compared to a standard notebook battery. They use lower charging voltages. In short, the batteries are under less stress than a typical notebook battery. The manufacturers are trading capacity for longevity. This also explains their short recharge times. The fuel tank is smaller.
Our engineers have spoken with our battery suppliers and they have determined that if we were to start limiting our capacities and charging voltages, with a few other minor tweaks, we could likely offer a multiple year battery. The ThinkPad team is studying this technology in our laboratories. It is up to the market to determine whether we bring this technology to market.
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March 23rd, 2009 4:29 pm
> if we were to start limiting our capacities and charging voltages, with a few
> other minor tweaks, we could likely offer a multiple year battery. The
> ThinkPad team is studying this technology in our laboratories. It is up to the
> market to determine whether we bring this technology to market.
Can this be done in software, i.e. Power Manager, or is the battery technology different in a long(er) life battery? If software, then let each customer determine where to draw the tradeoff line.
March 23rd, 2009 5:19 pm
I think the key thing you missed about the HP batteries is the fact that they charge up so fast: 80% in 30 minutes.
If you guys are going to do anything in the lab, I would beg of you to reduce charge times so that I can plug in my laptop while I enjoy a coffee in a cafe on my way to a client meeting and know that after a short amount of time I’ll get a lot of juice.
http://i.gizmodo.com/5171765/b.....-notebooks
March 23rd, 2009 7:01 pm
I Would prefer a Hybrid battery fuelcell
March 24th, 2009 7:38 am
I do not like the notion that a battery is loosing so much capacity over the years.
Invest in smart technologies to max out saving energy (you’d need good hardware AND good software/firmware for that, this common knowledge ),
and additionally improve the battery technology. I mean real research here.
In both areas there is a huge room for improvement. From my experience battery technology has not much evolved over the years, they just got bigger (sticking out at the back) with more energy wasting notebooks.
March 24th, 2009 9:38 am
I don’t know about HP new ones (let’s wait year or two), but current Lenovo 9-cells are dying in a month or two after the first year (e.g. warranty ends). Not loosing capacity, but going to less than 30 minutes overnight. That sucks, especially after 6-cells show quite reasonable “drop off”.
March 24th, 2009 2:25 pm
I think you’re heading to the wrong direction with this.
Dell is offering a laptop that runs 19 hours on a single charge, and HP are offering a laptop that runs 24 hours on a single charge. The longest lasting battery according to my knowledge is the 9-cell on the X200, which can run for close to 10 hours on a single charge (not using heavy apps)
http://www.notebookreview.com/.....ewsID=4497
Yes, I know that the results on the Dell/HP are arguable, but I hope you see where I’m heading with this.
I’d rather have a battery that can give me enough power to run for 15 or 20 hours, and I’d be very happy and satisfied with the 30% loss every year. By the end of the 2nd year, assuming 15 hours; the system could run for 5 hours on a single charge, which is almost twice what I get now on my T61.
Please focus your energy on extending battery longevity instead of offering multiple year batteries.
March 24th, 2009 3:58 pm
I hope the warranty for batteries will increase. I love thinkpad. But all the new lenovo thinkpads we’ve gotten in our company, 75% of the batteries die after 1.5 years. I feel the quality has degraded on the batteries over the years…
March 24th, 2009 7:04 pm
I’ve seen many announcements of potentially miraculous batteries that have failed to materialise year after year. I just wish that if we ever get one of those miracle batteries we will be able to retrofit it into older devices at affordable price.
March 24th, 2009 11:55 pm
I would love to see this “3 year” battery available for the ThinkPad. I just bought a replacement 9-cell battery for my T60 about 8 months ago and it has already dropped down to below 75% of its design capacity. My original 6-cell completely died after a year and one month in service (just past the warranty period). Given the long durability of a typical thinkpad, it does make a lot of sense to ship with a battery with long lifetime.
For a consumer like me without an IT department that can afford to have spare batteries sitting around, it’s quite a painful experience to have to be strapped down near a power plug for a week straight until a new battery arrives.
Also, from the standpoint of an engineering student bearing a heavy tuition load, I would frown upon raising costs of batteries which has already been inflating in price.
March 25th, 2009 11:45 am
This is admittedly off topic, but…
My Thinkpad X41 Tablet suffered a hard drive failure last week (I’ve never had an problems with Thinkpads). So I ordered an X200. When I ordered it, I see that there is an anticipated delay of several weeks (very furstrating, but I really want the x200). Yesterday I receive an email from Lenovo saying that my order is delayed due to an “internal issue.” I emailed back for clarification and receive this email:
I understand that you would like to confirm if the internal issue that we explained you earlier for your order number ____ is with your order or a systematic problem.This internal issue is with your order itself,I am afraid.However is not a systematic problem.This issue is certainly being looked into by our Executive team.We do apologize if there has been any kind of inconvenience caused.
If you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at 866-42-THINK (84465) option number 2. We will be happy to assist at that time.
Since I have no idea what this means, I call Lenovo. They tell me that my credit card has cleared but that there is a problem “transmitting the order to the wharehouse” and they have no idea when my order will be sent to the wharehouse or when I can expect to receive my computer. When ask for clarification, I get nowhere and eventually placed on eternal hold.
Now, 3 hour batteries are nice and all, but I’m without a laptop right now and have no idea when I’ll receive my nearly $3k ThinkPad. It’s my undersatnding that there was a hudge issue with order delays for the X61s not too long ago. Sager tells me today they can ship a computer to me tomorrow – why can’t lenovo do that?
March 25th, 2009 12:57 pm
Hallo,
I have a suggestion not about the batteries, but battery managment:
In my x60s 1 or 2 of the 8 cells have failed. This results in a stepwise behaviour inpredicted remaining battery life… the system goes directely from some 30% to maybe 12 %. ( or the equivalent in hours). It woudl be great if the battery software could take individual failed cells into account.
cheers
r.
March 25th, 2009 7:21 pm
A three year battery sounds great.
I’ve been using my T60 with a 6-cell battery for two and a half years now. According to the power manager, it’s still in good condition, has had ~300 cycles and lost some 20% of the total capacity since new. Okay I usually run it on AC, but still quite impressive in my book. I still get 3,5 hours of battery time with -everything- running at lowest setting, peachy. Battery is btw made by Panasonic.
March 26th, 2009 12:25 am
The comment about battery software (power management driver / power manager) taking individual failed cells into account gets a +1 from me.
Also – longer life v/s longer charge time – what’s the sweet spot, do you think?
March 26th, 2009 9:32 pm
Manufacturer seems to be the important part of the story. I have two batteries from 2004. The first has about 30 cycles and below 50% of capacity and the second more than 120 cycles and nearly 90% of capacity. The first is Sanyo and the second is Panasonic. From I have searched in various forums it is not a concidence
Yes, for Lenovo it is just “the same” part number. The “same component” like more or less crappy displays made by different vendors.
March 27th, 2009 1:36 pm
I would point out that not all thinkpad customers run Windows — some of us run Linux/BSD. Whatever future battery and power management developments, please consider ensuring all interfaces are kept open for us to get the most from our purchases.
March 27th, 2009 7:16 pm
The 4-year old 9-cell in my T42p has 45% of design capacity after 351 cycle counts.
March 29th, 2009 8:25 am
Hi Matt,
totally offtopic, but i just came back from a conference where i had to notice that Thinkpads seem to have lost against the fruit company by far. One year ago i still saw about two thirds of all notebooks being Thinkpads in my scientific community. Now i saw just a few newer X-series and the rest in black were older models like the T60 etc.
So a major part of the people i meet have agreed with me, that there is currently no replacement for the T60p in the Lenovo Thinkpad Line. A notebook with enough power to run longer calculations, still being light enough to carry it around the world. And good Linux support. A yes, the display ratio issue, but this is nothing where Apple get points…
So please pass this to the one in charge, Lenovo is losing a community formerly very loyal to Thinkpads.
cheers
Hecke
March 29th, 2009 9:21 am
I bought my Lenovo 3000 Y410 last year and my battery just wore off easily during this days. I’m very disappointed especially that other brands are even offering longer life for batteries. Imagine my battery went out after 15 minutes in high performance mode and 30 minutes in power balance mode.
I have chosen Lenovo over other brands because it’s formerly IBM and the previous laptops are really good. How come that this happened to my laptop.
I dont have enough money to buy a new one. I’m just thankful that that I’m still on waranty what will happen if something went wrong when my warranty ends?
My previous laptop is not Lenovo and working well. It’s with my sister and I havent had any problem and I havent even contacted the service provider meaning it havent conked out and the battery is still running more than an hour after 3 years.
Gosh!! I’m so disappointed. I even advertised to my friends before to buy lenovo but now I’m telling them to think otherwise.
thank you
connie
March 29th, 2009 12:14 pm
re: “The 1,000 cycle battery from another competitor is a bit of a misnomer. It still only has the standard one-year warranty that everyone else in the industry uses. I’ve been posing the question that if the company is so confident in its performance, why does it not increase the standard warranty to two or three years?”
I’m not sure if this is an issue – Apple has used the same battery technology in the iPhone and their MacBooks in the past few years and there haven’t been many complaints there. Perhaps the issues you mention don’t apply to LiPo batteries. Is there a reason Lenovo doesn’t use these widely in ThinkPads? I’d hate to think it’s cost as I’m sure you customers are willing (and already are) paying a premium.
By the way, a point worth nothing is that their sub 3kg MacBook Pro 17″ battery runs 6-8 hours, and your 4kg+ W700 struggles to stay on for 1-2 hours under normal usage. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d take the former option over the latter, regardless of the other factors you mention.
March 30th, 2009 12:36 am
Gaurav, if the choice would be between the two, i definitely agree with you.
March 31st, 2009 7:18 am
Gurav,
you’re comparing a sports car with a truck.
April 1st, 2009 2:04 am
Goran,
Gaurav is complaining that the trucks fuel reservoir only takes a few litres, whereas the sports cars is an order of magnitude bigger.
Your analogy is nice, as it shows the disadvantage of the W700 quite nicely. Who, despite people that have to move tens of tons, would like to drive a truck?
I’m sure, there is a demand (not just from me) for a light, thin, small thinkpad with two drives (eg SSD and HDD) a quad core and an extraordinary display.
The analogy also shows the problem of the Mac: What with your sports car, if you’re stuck in rough terrain. My notebook need not be shiny, only functional.
best,
Hecke
still waiting for the X400, 14.1 SXGA+ Flexview, <<2kg, and the above
April 1st, 2009 6:43 am
Hecke,
I’d like to have the power of W700 internals within MBA chasis with Thinkpad keyboard and IPS 1440×900 screen. Do you think that is realistic?
I object to this “amazment” that W700 is 50% heavier than 17″ Macbook and that its battery lasts so little. They are not really competitors, unlike e.g. MBA and X30x.
April 1st, 2009 11:59 pm
The hp enviro battery is a 4200 mAH unit.
The “standard” battery it replaces is also a 4200 mAH unit.
I’m not sure how one can assert that it is achieving its stated service life by having a “smaller fuel tank”.
Admittedly, I haven’t seen any independent verification of the service life claims, but I am interested in seeing how this plays out.
My 2001 Thinkpad R50 had a 6-cell battery which wore down to about 50% of original capacity after 4 years, and I replaced it with a 9-cell battery that stayed above 90% capacity for over 2 years.
I’m currently using a 3-month old Thinkpad X300, and I’m eyeing the battery capacity quite closely.
While batteries are consumable items, I don’t think people enjoy seeing their battery life plummet as drastically as some people have been reporting. I will be keeping a close watch on how the enviro batteries from Boston Power fare, and I hope lenovo does the same.
April 2nd, 2009 9:04 am
Goran,
i don’t think that it’s possible in the next years to get four cores and two harddrives in the chassis of the Air. But if you had a T41p with an SXGA+ Flexview display, it’s hard to believe, that the bulkiness of the W500 is in any way necessary. Just compare the thickness of the display chassis. And I doubt that the W500 is more stable than the T41.
What is it, that the W500 has in addition to the old one? A second core, some more or less useless screen width and what else that needs that much space? I’m just wondering about the blowing up in volume, i can’t see the reason.
cheers
Hecke
April 2nd, 2009 4:39 pm
Hecke,
I don’t have specifications comparing your T41p with W500, which is one comparison, but I can immediately spot the difference between W700 and 17″ MacBook Pro, and it’s stupid to complain about one set of compromises compared to another one. Those two machines were meant for different people. Personally, I think that comparing X30x and MBA has much more sense than the two 17″ machines.
April 4th, 2009 3:44 am
Interesting that you bring up batteries being “consumable.” My T60’s battery has, over the past couple months, dropped from lasting over 2.5 hours to lasting all of 7 minutes before sending the laptop into hibernate mode. Further experimenting has confirmed that the battery cells (the “consumable” part of the battery) are still in good condition, but the smart circuitry inside the battery is reporting the wrong data.
If there was one thing that would prevent me from buying another Thinkpad (or even recommending the brand), it would be the poor quality of Thinkpad batteries. What good is the extra capacity if I have to spend $160 for a new battery every 18 months? I’m not convinced that it’s the battery cells that need to be improved, but rather the way Lenovo designs its batteries.
April 6th, 2009 3:52 am
Goran, i agree, that the two discussed 17″ models are comparable. I’m mainly concerned about the trend away from building high performance notebooks with the smallest and lightest configuration possible. For your info, the physical specs of the T41p (http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....58183.html) are:
* Width: 311 mm (12.2 in)
* Depth: 255 mm (10.0 in)
* Height: 26.6 mm (1.0 in)
* Configured system weight (with DVD-ROM or CD-ROM):2.22 kg (4.9 lb)
If i consider this as the starting point for development for Lenovo, all i see is degradation. And again, despite some antennas, a second core, a fingerprint reader and some screen width, what (physically needing space) has been added from the T41p to the W500?
best
Hecke, still believing that Lenovo could produce the Notebook of his dreams…
April 6th, 2009 3:59 am
oops, forgot negation in the first sentence.
NOT comparable.
sorry
Hecke
April 6th, 2009 5:44 am
Hecke, I really don’t know, since I’ve lost interest in those series more than a year ago. I was bothered with transition from 4:3 to 16:10 models, wider and allegedly narrower, but not really since they come with protruding battery, and at the cost of lower vertical resolution.
April 6th, 2009 6:41 am
yup. sad but true….
April 14th, 2009 6:47 pm
Goran/Hecke,
Both 17″ notebooks are aimed at largely the same person (Photo, Video editing, etc) – this is even indicated within previous posts on this exact very same blog. They use similar (if not the same) LCD panels (although I’m not sure the Lenovo one is LED backlit) and are both relatively fast in their most common configuration (approaching 2×3GHz).
There are some “embarrassingly parallel” tasks where the $4000+ quad core W700 with fastest graphics will be faster, but if performance is the aim, you’ll get about 4x-8x that amount of performance from a maxed out workstation. True, a niche may exist for a $4000-5000 mini parallel workstation, but that’s a *really* small potential market, it’s just very difficult to imagine Lenovo being able to sustain this product line in it’s current form.
A flattened X300-like 17″ notebook with reasonably fast specification (similar to W500) would have made much more sense.
April 18th, 2009 10:42 pm
Well, Matt, you managing to lose only about 10% of the battery capacity per year makes me happy as someone who doesn’t know much about batteries but still manages to conserve them about the same as you do.
As I realized the battery shouldn’t be stressed out too much too often and I refuse to take it out every time I plug my ThinkPad into the wall (so it serves me sort of like a UPS whenever I’m plugged into the wall), I only charge it up to 70% and make it start recharging only after getting below 40%.
My use case is having a laptop plugged into the wall over 90% of the time, rarely really needing my battery so it’s usually between 40 and 70% of its capacity at around 30°C (which largely depends on the season) and I’m currently at exactly(!) 90% of the design capacity after 224 cycle counts and a year and a little over 4 months of constant laptop usage.
And for the curious, when I do need to go somewhere where I’ll need my battery, I found charging it to 100% just before I leave the wall socket not posing a problem. But that’s true in my case, so YMMV.
April 24th, 2009 5:04 am
The main problem with these batteries is that they are too unreliable and too expensive. It’s ok that they crap out after 2-3 years. The problem is by that time, the laptop has depreciated so much that a replacement battery costs more than the laptop is worth. The battery pricing is basically a scam. Price the batteries more attractively (like $50 instead of $200–this is definitely doable since that’s what the 3rd party ones cost) and replacing them wont be so annoying.
May 19th, 2009 3:21 pm
The Lenovo/Thinkpad battery problem exist in spades. A Lenovo 3000 n100 standard battery last only 14 to 16 months tops. I have a HP NC6000 that is 5 years old and the OEM battery will still keep this laptop running for over 2 hours. Lenovo has a problem and it’s battery technology. You are installing cheap Chinese batteries in your machines and screwing your customers. You are biting the hand that feeds you. If 80% of your customers feel like I do about your product and your reaction to the problem then you have lost 80% of your customer base. It’s going to cost you more than the cost of a few thousand replacement batteries to rebuild consumer trust in the USA. I, for one,
will probably never consider buying another Lenovo product.
May 21st, 2009 8:13 am
I suspect that the problem isn’t actually the cheap chinese batteries, but the truly awful Sony cells.
11 months into my X61s’s lifetime, I managed to get a battery replacement under warranty from Lenovo. The battery was 11 months old, and had maybe half its original capacity.
10 months after that, the replacement battery is down to maybe 60% – it appears to have at least two bad cells – which is really unacceptable. I chose the X61s for a lightweight, long battery life (LV processor, 8-cell battery, etc) platform.
With other manufacturers, I have had very good luck with batteries containing non-Sony cells (the ones I could conclusively identify were Sanyo), but the Sony cells are just horrible.
Given Lenovo’s replacement battery pricing, plus the 4+ week ship time on a battery that almost certainly still contains the awful Sony cells, I have ordered a third party battery. It’s unlikely to be any worse…
I’m still not sure what the eventual replacement for the X61s will be – but it probably won’t happen until Calpella ships.
October 20th, 2009 3:30 pm
I have a T61p that is about 18 months old, before it was 1 year old the battery had gone from 4.5 to 2.5 hours – almost a 50% reduction in performance. My wife passed away and by the time I was able to call in to ask for support I was told my battery had just passed the warranty period and that I could purchase a replacement for $180.
Less than 2 months later the battery reported a complete failure (I forget the actual error message) and no longer powered the laptop – pull the power cord and the laptop shuts off immediately. This despite the power manager saying the battery has a 69% charge remaining.
I would WELCOME a 3 year warranty. Heck, I’d be happy if Lenovo would just step up and warranty that a battery would provide a minimum level of functionality over the life of the laptop warranty! This 12 months and your screwed is NOT acceptable for a $2400 laptop (T61p, WUXGA, 4gb, 200gb, etc.). Trying to play down or dismiss your competitor for actually providing value to their customers is disingenuous at best. Instead, you should acknowledge that HP has realized what you need to – that customers want batteries that will last (or be warrantied) for the life of the laptop warranty. If you warranty a laptop for 3 years, make sure the battery is covered too.
Yes batteries wear out, but I have to say that after having used laptops for the better part of 20 years that my t61p’s battery performance is extremely poor and leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve had better longevity with batteries on an old Dell laptop that is 5+ years old and still plugging along nicely.
January 25th, 2010 6:13 am
3 years may be this is too long for us.it must be more expensive.