HP recalls 78,500 more laptop batteries because of fire concerns

HP has recalled 78,500 batteries used in its laptops and mobile workstations, due to overheating issues which can cause fire and burn hazards.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall on Tuesday, but noted that the recall expansion was previously announced independently on January 17 by HP, and delayed due to the government furlough. It's considered an expansion of the previous HP battery recall of January, 2018, which affected 50,000 batteries. HP has received eight new reports of battery packs in the U.S. overheating, melting, or charring, including one report of minor injury and two reports of property damage totaling $1,100, the CPSC said.

Specifically, the batteries were either sold inside of or as accessories to: HP ProBooks (64x G2 and G3 series, 65x G2 and G3 series, 4xx G4 series), HPx360 (310 G2), HP Pavilion x360 11-inch Notebook PC, HP 11 Notebook PC, HP ZBook (17 G3, and Studio G3) mobile workstations. The batteries were also sold as accessories or replacement batteries for the HP ZBook Studio G4 mobile workstation, HP ProBook 4xx G5 series, HP ENVY 15, HP Mobile Thin Clients (mt21, mt22, and mt31), or for any of the products listed above.

The batteries were shipped between December, 2015 and April, 2018 as part of the HP laptops listed above, as well as sold separately between December, 2015 and December, 2018.

Consumers can visit HP's battery recall site to find out whether their laptop is affected. The batteries are not customer-replaceable, which means that you'll need to ship back your laptop to HP to have it repaired.

If you do have an affected battery, don't remove it yourself, HP has warned. Instead, HP has developed a BIOS update that will put the battery into a "battery safety mode." This mode will discharge the battery and prevent it from being recharged until the battery is replaced. Put another way, HP said that your notebook will simply refuse to operate without the charger attached, so you'll need to plug in the laptop to use it.

:story: PCWorld