Extended Battery Prices

You may be waiting a long time. I know these batteries are "smart" compared to the old dvx/hvx batteries and that they display the actual amount of time left and not just an estimate. Not sure if any third parties will be manufacturing the "smart" batteries anytime soon.
 
I took a gamble and bought some of those $20 after market VW-VBG260 batteries on eBay from two different sellers - they don't work!! I get a message saying "Battery Cannot Be Used" and did a voltage reading on them and they all came up with around 9.3V instead of the 7.2 volts required. I've got it down to the fact that this little camera has a limited tolerance for battery voltage which needs to be under 8 volts otherwise the camera will reject the battery & shut down. I measured my Panasonic batteries and fully charged they read 7.9 volts.

I have 2 super high capacity 7.4 volt 8,000mah Li-ion batteries that I use with my LED light so I retrofitted the DC coupler that comes with the camera with an additional DC plug to fit these batteries, but found that I had to drain the battery down to the maximum 7.9 volts before the camera would accept them. Once the battery voltage was within range I was able to run the camera on it for about 3 hours. The only problem was that I had to be tethered to a battery belt like in the olden days ;)

I just want to exhaust all posibilities before I shell out $1,000AUD on new batteries to run my two HMC-152 cameras.
 
I got my Panny VW-VBG6PPK batts for $140 each from Ryan at Full Compass and haven't looked back :)
 
Wow $140 that's darn cheap!! I've just sent them an e-mail to quote me on 4 x VBG6 batteries + shipping to Australia, let's see how we go...
 
Last edited:
Evro, a couple of things. First, a 2 cell Li-Ion battery (all of the smaller cams use them) inherently can not produce more than 8.4V. This has something to do with the Li-Ion chemistry. Second, the new Panasonic HMC150 camera talks to the battery, and would not power up unless it passes a secret handshake test. Just to make sure, that generic batteries are no longer a low cost alternative :-(
Sony does it for years.
HTH
 
The new Panasonic HMC150 camera talks to the battery, and would not power up unless it passes a secret handshake test. J
HTH

Sounds like Animal House.

It's really too bad.

A battery is a battery and as long the tolerances are set, why should a user be able to purchase something that carries the same quality without the premium price.

We have a couple of Alex's batteries and they work without incident with our HVX200 and 170

This approach sounds like the generic versus name brand inkjet cartridge issues.
 
Thanks for that Alex, I didn't know that about Li-Ion batteries and understand totally... that's why when you use the supplied DC coupler, the camera powers up but does not give any remaining battery life information.

I think as long as you can get a battery that has a built in life indicator and supplies the required voltage you're pretty much at the mercy of the high priced OEM batteries - at least until our Asian friends engineer an after-market battery with compatible electronics :)
 
Do the dark blue batteries that were sold on here work?I had several I bought for the hvx200, and planned to use them on the 150 if purchased.

That could be a deal breaker on the camera.


Will the extended batteries that were sold from hvxusers, work in the 170?
 
Yeah, in the Sony world it is a constant cat and mouse game. First the generics manufacturers crack the code and start selling their knock offs. Then Sony comes out with a new camera/new code, not recognizing them. Then the generics crack the code again :-)
 
A battery is a battery and as long the tolerances are set, why should a user be able to purchase something that carries the same quality without the premium price.
Wow, my experience was completely different. Because a battery isn't a battery, IMHO. 3 years ago, I purchased 4 DVuxser batteries, after only 18 months, only one of them worked. For various reasons. Voltage drop on one of them (wouldn't hold a charge). Another one was dropped and broke apart into 1 million pieces. They just didn't hold up. The Panasonic brand batteries I bought around the same time still work as good as new. And, they'd been dropped just as many times. Just a thought. Whatever Pana does to their batteries, they last longer and are more reliable. Off brand batteries are not the same.

This approach sounds like the generic versus name brand inkjet cartridge issues.

I thought that, too. So I bought continuous ink systems for my Epson printers.. it ruined them! Hundreds of bad prints, one after another. Whatever Epson does to their ink is VERY special and proprietary for a reason. It's the only way to avoid head clogs...

Not to be argumentative, but OEM stuff is pricey for a reason. It's obviously because manufacturers set a minimum level of "quality" to be built into their parts, and off brand manufacturers will never meet those standards, counting on clueless consumers to not realize the differences and choose to save money instead. But, the savings usually just are not worth it. Sucks, but that's just been my experience with this stuff.
 
I bought a brand new Sony Vaio with dedicated video card, carbon fiber casing and aluminum trim. I also bought some after market batteries. The first time I used it in the field, the after market batteries did not work. It would shut the laptop down as soon as inserted.
Obviously I had to fix this issue right away.

It appeared that Sony was performing a loop back from software through the battery.
No other difference in battery.

I then went to the registry and removed the ISBmgr, and software files associated with it.

The aftermarket batteries now worked, and lasted about 40 minutes longer than the sony's.

That was frustrating.
 
Last edited:
Wow, my experience was completely different. Because a battery isn't a battery, IMHO. 3 years ago, I purchased 4 DVuxser batteries, after only 18 months, only one of them worked. For various reasons. Voltage drop on one of them (wouldn't hold a charge). Another one was dropped and broke apart into 1 million pieces. They just didn't hold up. The Panasonic brand batteries I bought around the same time still work as good as new. And, they'd been dropped just as many times. Just a thought. Whatever Pana does to their batteries, they last longer and are more reliable. Off brand batteries are not the same. (


There are only about 4 1 tier cell makers in the world. In Japan there are Sony, Panasonic and Sanyo. In Korea there is LG. They are very serious about their reputation, their quality is tightly controlled, so the cells test to what the spec sheets calls for, both capacity and cycle life. When they have major recalls, they are embarassed, and try to address the problem. Everything else is made in China. Their level of quality control is not the same for the obvious reasons; there is no consistency from sample to sample. In addition, they typically are lesser capacity than the label is, but an average user does not have a way to measure actual capacity, if it is in the ballpark, nobody knows if there is 20%-25% missing :-(
 
But at $140 less than the genuine battery how can we resist? I accidentally left a near new Panasonic 5400mah DVX battery at a venue 22 months ago and never saw it again. Had it been one of my $30 after-market eBay batteries I wouldn't have been so upset ;-)
 
Back
Top