Batteries K20D

I am looking at getting a spare battery for my K20D.

The oem model is twice the price of an aftermarket one and also a lot more expensive than the Samsung version which appears to be the same.

Is it false economy to buy non oem or are you just paying for the Pentax name screenprinted onto the same battery?

Cheers,
Andy

i have 3 non pentax ones and there are no different to the pentax one, oh except they cost me about £15 for the 3.

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=99219



http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2x-Battery-Pack-PENTAX-K10D-K10-K20D_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQ_tr...

gone up since i got mine but rated at 1700mah same as the pentax version,

This is an old one that keeps cropping up.

The Pentax and Samsung batteries are the same, just as the cameras are the same.

We have two K20D cameras and a total of 6 Pentax batteries -= I would not use an unknown source cheap battery.

There are plenty of people on here who use alternatives though, and so far no one has reported a disaster.

There are different views on this topic. However, I have a very expensive (but now quite old) mobile phone (won in a raffle - I normally buy the cheapest I can get from Tesco) and the battery leaked causing a nasty mess. It was the original Sony Ericsson battery.

So the moral might be to change all your camera batteries after three or four years.

G

If an after market battery leak during warranty, what will you get? A replacement battery but not the cost of repairing the camera.

If a Pentax one leaks - hopefully Pentax would sort out the camera too.

I need to get a second battery and am still deciding whether to go third party or not. If I do, it will sit in the Battery Grip.

I have done some digging around and taken comments from here into account and those from Inov8 seem to be pretty good. There are other which I would steer clear of - based on comments such as failed after nn charges, started OK but pretty soon it was just 100 actuations, minor leaks but seen before it did any damage ...

Yes, I was looking a the Inov at half the price - really because SRS sell it and I trust them!

Andy

my second battery is a non-pentax battery,and it lives in the grip(£45 from jessops)and that is the only place it will go !!!

Premier Ink Photographic at Leamington Spa has equivalent batteries in stock for £12.71 each. They have a sales counter. NB. Minolta NP400 are the same equivalent battery.

I've been using the same three 7DayShop batteries in my K10D then K20D for more than a couple of years now - with decent performance and no problems.

I would only bother buying a Pentax battery if I needed the slightly higher capacity. I don't.

I think it's rare for lithium ion batteries to leak at all. I've personally never seen a leaky one in any device I've had, including mobile phones, laptop, cycle light and various cameras. That's not to say it can't happen, but it's not something I worry about.

I have Hahnel spare batteries for my K10D, bought for about 1/2 the price of the Pentax one, the capacity may be slightly less, but I get much more life out of the OEM battery...

Peter

They can actually catch fire or even explode. This led to the recall of a batch of (Sony or Dell?) laptop batteries about 2 years ago.

I've not heard of an exploding camera yet....

Yes I remember that, my wife's Dell laptop at the time had the battery type that was suspect although I seem to remember that it was particular batch of serial numbers that had the problem. Nasty though

Batteries do not catch fire or explode by themselves without a short circuit or extreme heat - be it internal or external. That's not going to happen with mine.

The worry about terrible things happening when using third- party batteries is silly. The worst that is likely to happen is that you will get less capacity or life than advertised.