Review APC Universal Laptop Battery Extender UPB-90

The battery was sent directly from American Power Conversion in Chino, California by standard three to five day shipping and arrived in four business days. Well boxed and taped, the unit was packed in bubble-wrap and was in a plastic blister pack for retail rack display. The blister pack was inside an anti-static sleeve. Although I'm not a big fan of blister packaging, I was pleased to see that the edges of the pack were notched for easier opening.

Setting up the UPB-90 involved first identifying the power tips to use with the notebook. My test machine was a ThinkPad R52 and the included chart identified the correct tips as type "B/B." Three connections are involved. The first is from the notebook's power adapter ("power brick") to the UPB-90's power cord, and this used the B jack. The second is to the universal battery itself, and this used a proprietary adapter. The third, and located on the longest cable, is to the notebook using the B tip.

The OLED display indicated that the battery was 49% charged at first power-up. It went to 100% using the notebook's power adapter in less than two hours. It's rated for full charge within 3.5 hours, so this was in line with the specifications.

As such things go, the UPB-90 is a bit of a luxury product. Some features, such as the OLED display and the voltage auto-sensing and auto-setting, are only found on the higher-end devices. Its light weight and notable thinness, however, are somewhat representative of this class of product, except for the very cheapest models.

The image below will give you an idea of how thin it is.

We tested the runtime of the UDB-90 by playing a DVD in PowerDVD 6 at full brightness and 50% volume. The fully charged standard battery in the ThinkPad (not the optional 9-cell battery shown in the image above) ran for 1 hr. 27 min. before the laptop beeped and went into automatic hibernation at 15% battery capacity.

In the subsequent test, the low battery warning from the UBP-90 came at 4 hrs, 10 mins. At that point, the ThinkPad was still showing 100% charge. At 4 hrs, 17 minutes, the ThinkPad's charge indicator stopped showing the plugged-in symbol, and normal discharge began.

This was an excellent performance from a device so light and thin. To put this in perspective, it would make the difference between completely depleting the laptop's battery watching one long movie and watching a couple of DVDs between Atlanta and San Jose.