ARN

Australian Govt flags HP laptop battery recall

HP announced a worldwide voluntary safety recall and replacement program in January

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has issued a recall notice for batteries in several HP laptops, echoing the global recall by the hardware maker in early January.

In January 2018, in cooperation with various government regulatory agencies, HP announced a worldwide voluntary safety recall and replacement program for certain notebook computer and mobile workstation batteries.

At the time, HP said it was recalling about 50,000 consumer notebooks batteries.

"The batteries have the potential to overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to customers. For this reason, it is extremely important to check whether your battery is affected," HP said at the time.

The tech giant said it had received eight reports of the batteries "overheating, melting, or charring", which included property damage and burns.

Specifically, the affected notebook models include the HP ProBooks (64x G2 and G3 series, 65x G2 and G3 series), the HP x360 310 G2, as well as the HP Envy m6, HP Pavilion x360, HP 11, HP ZBook (17 G3, 17 G4, and Studio G3) Mobile Workstations.

The battery packs have a CT: code with imbedded information than can be decoded by HP. The first characters of the unique number of a potentially affected battery will be: 6GAVV, 6EZPC, 6FDWN, 6EZZE, 6EZZF, 6EVXH, 6ETGL, 6FSRV, 6FWBF or 6FWBH.

At the time, HP said it is also providing a BIOS update that places the battery in "Battery Safety Mode" so that the notebook or workstation can be safely used without the battery by connecting to an HP power adaptor.

“Batteries affected by this recall should immediately be put into “Battery Safe Mode”. You may continue to use your notebook on “Battery Safety Mode”, by connecting the notebook to a HP power adaptor,” the ACCC said in a statement.

More information can be found on the ACCC's Product Safety Australia website here.

The local recall for the HP batteries comes just weeks after Lenovo recalled its ThinkPad X1 Carbon fifth generation notebooks manufactured between December 2016 and October 2017, due to a potential overheating hazard.

The company discovered that an unfastened screw can damage the battery, causing overheating and a fire risk.

To remedy the situation, Lenovo is offering customers free-of-charge service inspections for all recalled notebooks, which includes model numbers: 20HQ; 20HR; 20K3 and 20K4.