My laptop’s battery has clearly aged over the years (like milk, not wine) and it’s starting to become a problem in everyday use. When normally I can easily get through the day with maybe 20-30% remaining, Now my laptop always dies around 3:00, give or take an hour depending on usage. (And I’m not doing many heavy tasks either - mainly web browsing, doing schoolwork, occasionally watching a few internet videos, that sort of thing. I don’t play many games, and the ones I do play aren’t that intensive, stuff like Minecraft. I don’t play any “AAA” games - who came with that anyways? It’s a really stupid label. What gives a game 3 As, and why isn’t there too many “AA”, “A”, or “B-E” games? Why not just call them corporate games or similar, since many indie games are just as good, if not better, without using over a hundred gigabytes of storage and being super inefficient…)

When I ran upower, these are the statistics that were produced:

  native-path:          BAT0
  vendor:               ASUSTeK
  model:                UP3404VA
  serial:               123456789
  power supply:         yes
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               discharging
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              28.2173 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         48.655 Wh
    energy-full-design:  75.0868 Wh
    voltage-min-design:  7.971 V
    capacity-level:      Normal
    energy-rate:         6.95868 W
    voltage:             7.971 V
    charge-cycles:       823
    time to empty:       4.1 hours
    percentage:          58%
    capacity:            64.7983%
    technology:          lithium-polymer
    icon-name:          'battery-good-symbolic'

The battery capacity is 64.8% of original capacity, which obviously is bad. You can also see that it has sustained over 800 charge cycles (which I assume is a lot. A quick search online shows that someone with around 600 cycles on their laptop being told to replace the battery). Interestingly, the serial is “123456789”, which is probably some placeholder and the actual serial number couldn’t be found. I wonder why.

My search for the specific battery model that my laptop requires led me to a random teardown article, where they briefly shows the battery with the model #, which is C22N2107, a 75Wh pack. I can find a bunch of third-party replacements online, but no Asus-branded ones.

Given that my battery has clearly aged, should I get an aftermarket battery replacement? Are third-party batteries safe to use? Asus doesn’t seem to sell the battery on their e-store, and there’s no chance that Asus will offer to replace it for a reasonable amount of money (plus, my warranty is expired by now).

Are third-party batteries any good, and are they safe to use?