MSI PS42 8RB Laptop Battery Replacement Review

It's already been 5 years since I purchased the laptop.

The battery efficiency kept declining to the point where I always had to carry the laptop and charger together.

So, I decided to replace the battery. 

No matter how I searched AliExpress, I couldn't find anything good, and due to the rise in exchange rates, buying from Naver, including shipping costs, was cheaper.

According to my search, ordering from Ali takes more than a month because of customs issues, so I decided to buy from Naver, where the delivery date is guaranteed.

The item arrived in a week.

The packaging has a somewhat luxurious feel.

Apple keeps many people employed.

The internal battery looks exactly like the original genuine battery, which I don't even remember anymore.

Let's disassemble the laptop now.

You just need to unscrew all the screws on the bottom.

Fortunately, this laptop doesn't have any hidden screws.

I unscrewed it and sacrificed one of our pick tools.

I compared the existing battery with the genuine battery.

Three weeks have passed since I replaced the battery, and I don't even remember what the genuine battery was.

I think the genuine battery had a higher minimum capacity.

After installing the Chinese battery in the laptop, assembly is indeed the reverse of disassembly. 

My laptop, with the heart of Mao Zedong.

Checking the battery runtime in Ubuntu, it shows approximately 5 hours.

If running many programs, it can reduce to 1 hour and 30 minutes, but

for document work, it showed up to 7 hours.

Even on Windows, it shows a decent battery time of 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Before the replacement, it barely lasted an hour.

Checking the battery, it increased from 36,000mWh to a maximum of 51,680mWh after the replacement.

Interestingly, it overcharges slightly beyond the designed capacity but...

It should be fine????

I was too curious and took apart the removed battery cell.

There were 4 cells, each with 3.8V, 3340mAh.

The model name was faint, but searching for the battery cell with that voltage, it turns out buying it whole is cheaper.

Anyway, it was a simple structure with 4 battery cells connected, and if you are knowledgeable about batteries, you might even be able to make a phone battery charger from it.

That's how I finished replacing the laptop battery.

While searching, I read many negative articles about Chinese batteries, but it wasn't as bad as I thought.

I'll probably compare AliExpress and Naver for my next purchase as well.