Back in 2014 I bought a LP-E6 battery on eBay. It was cheap in comparison to UK camera shops, but not so cheap as to raise ‘alarm bells’. It worked fine.
It was when I bought another LP-E6 battery on eBay a year later that I realised something was amiss. Both of the eBay batteries had the same serial number, so I could not register the second one in either of the cameras I had at the time!
These batteries were both fakes – but very, very 'good' fakes. I have asked loads of people to decide which of these 2 batteries, and 2 genuine Canon ones, are the fakes. Most get it wrong. The date stamp is actually clearer on the fakes, which is what misleads people. It is also the case that the date stamps on the 2 fakes are different, with both being within a reasonable time frame for when I bought the batteries. Whoever makes these fakes is going to a lot of trouble.
So what you may ask. My 3 Hahnel HLX-E6 batteries all have the same internal serial numbers and, like the fakes, they all still show 3 green blobs on the battery info screen even though they are now old enough to have deteriorated to being well less than perfect. The “so what” is that one of my fake LP-E6s fell apart the other day and, although I’m not an electronics expert, I do have some serious misgivings about what is inside the casing. There are photos of the innards of genuine LP-E6s on the Web, and the fakes have nothing like the circuitry in a genuine Canon LP-E6 - in fact it they have virtually nothing at all.
I do have a genuine Canon LP-E6 from 2011 which now shows a red blob in the battery info screen. It still works OK and holds a charge more than long enough to be useful. But I can’t really trust it and I’m thinking about opening it up (I do know the risks) to compare the real thing with the fake.
So I don’t buy cheap batteries any more. I don’t even buy 3rd party ones, even though my Hahnel batteries have been OK and I have no reason to believe that they may be unsafe in the way the fakes appear to be. But I’ve recently spent £3000 on a 5D mk 4 – so why would I even contemplate saving £30 on a battery which might possibly be dangerous – to me and/or my new camera.
I’m sure others will have a different point of view, but if anyone is an expert on Lithium-Ion batteries and wants a potentially dangerous fake one to look at, I do have 2 which I no longer have any use for – and one is already in bits so you won't even have to carefully pries open the casing!
It was when I bought another LP-E6 battery on eBay a year later that I realised something was amiss. Both of the eBay batteries had the same serial number, so I could not register the second one in either of the cameras I had at the time!
These batteries were both fakes – but very, very 'good' fakes. I have asked loads of people to decide which of these 2 batteries, and 2 genuine Canon ones, are the fakes. Most get it wrong. The date stamp is actually clearer on the fakes, which is what misleads people. It is also the case that the date stamps on the 2 fakes are different, with both being within a reasonable time frame for when I bought the batteries. Whoever makes these fakes is going to a lot of trouble.
So what you may ask. My 3 Hahnel HLX-E6 batteries all have the same internal serial numbers and, like the fakes, they all still show 3 green blobs on the battery info screen even though they are now old enough to have deteriorated to being well less than perfect. The “so what” is that one of my fake LP-E6s fell apart the other day and, although I’m not an electronics expert, I do have some serious misgivings about what is inside the casing. There are photos of the innards of genuine LP-E6s on the Web, and the fakes have nothing like the circuitry in a genuine Canon LP-E6 - in fact it they have virtually nothing at all.
I do have a genuine Canon LP-E6 from 2011 which now shows a red blob in the battery info screen. It still works OK and holds a charge more than long enough to be useful. But I can’t really trust it and I’m thinking about opening it up (I do know the risks) to compare the real thing with the fake.
So I don’t buy cheap batteries any more. I don’t even buy 3rd party ones, even though my Hahnel batteries have been OK and I have no reason to believe that they may be unsafe in the way the fakes appear to be. But I’ve recently spent £3000 on a 5D mk 4 – so why would I even contemplate saving £30 on a battery which might possibly be dangerous – to me and/or my new camera.
I’m sure others will have a different point of view, but if anyone is an expert on Lithium-Ion batteries and wants a potentially dangerous fake one to look at, I do have 2 which I no longer have any use for – and one is already in bits so you won't even have to carefully pries open the casing!
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