Lenmar Universal External Laptop Battery
Lenmar Enterprises makes a wide range of laptop and consumer electronics batteries and other power products like chargers and adapters for all your power needs.
Ease of Use, Performance: 24/25
Look & Feel: 24/25
Features 24/25
How much I enjoy 23/25
Total: 95/100
I was looking for some extra power for my wife's laptop that I use for testing laptop products from time to time and wanted to have something as an external power source along with the internal battery. I found a company that specializes not only in internal batteries for laptops, cell phones, cameras and more but with just about everything else involved with power for consumer electronics.
Lenmar makes an external universal battery set called the Lenmar Universal External Laptop Battery that can be used as an extra battery for just about any laptop that uses 16 or 19 volts. The Lenmar Universal Battery uses a set of adapters and a cable to connect to your laptop and its these adapters that allow it to connect to a wide variety of laptops.
The Lenmar Universal External Laptop Battery model PPU916 comes with the battery itself, 8 charging tips, 7 battery output tips and the output cable as well as instructions. The instructions are pretty simple and using the battery is easy, a bent tip is for charging the battery itself and the straight tips are for use with your laptop in charging/running it.
You first figure out which tips you need, the straight tip has one end that fits onto your laptop and the other fits onto the end of the output cable. All the tips have one end that is the same size and the other for the variety of laptops that are out there.
There is also a bent tip that has the one end that is the same size and a hole for your power adapter from your laptop to plug into. All you need to do is find the straight tip and the bent tip that fits your laptop and AC adapter that came with your laptop.
Instructions will help with this but just trying each adapter to find which one fits is also an easy way to find the correct tips. You also need to switch the battery power output to the correct voltage your laptop uses, 16 or 19 volts, which is usually displayed on the bottom of your laptop and on the adapter.
Once you find the two tips, one bent that fits your adapter and one straight that fits into the power connector of your laptop your ready to start charging the battery. Simply plug the bent tip into the IN connection on the battery and plug your laptops power adapter into the tip to charge the Lenmar Universal Battery.
The Lenmar battery has a red, green and blue gauge on it with 5 LED's and one that glows Red when charging, Green when charged and has the 5 levels of charge in blue when you press the button next to the LED's. When the battery gets to 10% of its charge it goes into a low power warning where the one last blue LED will start to blink.
Each LED when you press the power indicator button next to the LED's is a level of charge but not an exact gauge, each LED is about 20% of the batteries capacity. Once your battery is charged you can start using it, simply plug the straight tip that fits your laptop into the cable and your laptop.
The other end of the cable goes into the OUT connection of the Universal External Battery to complete the process of connecting your battery to your laptop. Your laptop will recognize the Lenmar battery as an external power connection just like your AC wall adapter.
You cannot get a reading of how much the external battery has from your laptop as all the laptop knows is the external connection is getting power, not that it is from a battery. The external battery will charge your internal battery if it is low of power, less than 100%, as well as run your laptop.
If the external battery charges the internal battery it will have less power to run your laptop after it is done charging the internal battery. You can use the Lenmar battery with or without your internal laptop battery but there are some cautions if you use your laptop with only the external battery and not the internal one connected.
When I worked with the battery I tried it both ways, just plugging it in and using it with my laptops internal battery installed as well as taking the internal battery out and then turning on the computer with the external battery. I did not have any problems taking the internal battery out or install it with power applied.
Once I hooked up the external battery my laptop said the external power was applied and when I had the internal battery removed it simply said I did not have a battery installed but was on external power. Once the Lenmar external battery loses power your laptop will shut down without warning so using the external battery without an internal battery is a bit risky.
You could potentially lose important information if your laptop simply shuts down when on the external power as the Lenmar battery only gives you the blue blinking LED to warn you it is about out of power. With an internal battery your laptop will warn you its own way so you have a better way to warn you power is about to be lost when the internal battery is low.
I think it is just as easy to use the external battery first on a fully charged laptop then go to internal power so that your laptop will correctly warn you to save and shut down your laptop. However you use the external battery it does give you some extra power and this will depend on how you use your laptop.
Testing the battery by watching online videos straight through I get an average of about an hour and ten minutes of extra battery power from the Lenmar Universal Laptop Battery. This is pretty good considering the laptop battery of the HP laptop weighs almost exactly the same and gives out the same power needed as the internal one from HP.
My wife's laptop when the battery was new would last about 2 hours viewing online videos and other intensive uses like movie watching or gaming without worrying about power saving features. Of course if you are planning on using your Lenmar battery you should try to conserve power while using it and turn your screen to power saving mode and use other power saving features.
I didn't bother during my testing as I wanted to see just how long it would last without any of these types of features, the worst case scenario as it were. Even without using the power saving features of the HP laptop it worked very well and did add over an hour to my video viewing.
The Lenmar Universal External Laptop Battery model PPU916 makes a great external battery for your laptop as a way to power your laptop for some extra time but this will depend on how you use your laptop. Using power saving settings just like you would to conserve the internal battery will make it last longer, of course doing more power intensive things like watching video will drain it more as well.
The Lenmar Universal External Battery costs $129.95 at the Lenmar site but you can find the Lenmar Universal External Laptop Battery at online sites like Amazon and Newegg for about $70 to $100. If you need an extra power source for your laptop and don't want to spend the extra on a spare internal battery an external one is also an option.
A benefit of getting an external battery is that you can just keep the laptop on and not have to shut it down to change the battery out as you do with an internal one. I was very impressed with the design of the tips and cables as well as the general performance of the Lenmar Universal External Laptop Battery.
I highly recommend the Lenmar External Laptop Battery for some spare power for your laptop if you need it for your 16 or 19 volt laptop available at Lenmar and other online sites.