09/12/2024, 2:19 PM

THE PSP BATTERY ESSAY

(a classical piece of Mot literature)

back in June or so, i was having troubles with my PSP-3000's battery, which i had recently replaced, and was wanting to document my struggles for those who were having the same issue as me. so i did as any normal demon does and took to tumblr, wanting to make a big long post about PSP batteries, what to buy, what to avoid, and how to take good care of your battery. i was pretty proud of that post, and since i don't really plan on using social media all that much anymore, i figured it might be a good idea to transfer it on over to here. so if anything seems to sound weird or off, that would be why.

(original post date: June 14th, 2024)
ok hi ive been struggling lately with my psp battery i bought at a retro game store near my place. its been doing a lot of weird things so today i finally decided to run some tests relating to its true battery life, and got some weird results. heres my findings

first, some background knowledge. i have a psp model 3000, it's the newest (exclusing the psp go) model of psp, and came stock with a 1200 mAh battery when it was sold. i had a hard time finding a common consensus on the battery life of a stock psp 3000 battery, but it seems to me that it would last around 6 hours when not doing anything intensive, and around 4 hours if you're playing a game or something.

the replacement battery i bought was an aftermarket battery for the 3000 by a company called xyab, and this battery was advertised at being 800 mAh, and somehow would provide "up to 6 hours of extended gameplay", according to the packaging. yeah, sure bud.



well, when i got home and put this thing in my psp, it came with a full charge and was working great. then, when my friend was playing it, it just randomly shut off, even though it didnt seem to be at low battery or anything. (i hadnt done any research on psp batteries at the time so the 800 mAh capacity didnt raise any red flags to me yet) then, when i was at work one day, the same thing happened again, and it appeared to be at 2/3rds of battery capacity when it happened. (this time i was the one playing it, so i had first hand experience.) usually, when a psp's battery is low, the green battery light will flash a bit, indicating that you need to charge it. when it shut off this time, it hadn't been blinking at all, so i figured something must have been up.

today i finally bit the bullet and ran some tests on the thing to make sure i wasn't nuts. i recorded my psp on the battery info screen, let it sit without being plugged in, and checked back on the footage later to see the percent it was at when it shut off. like i'd suspected, it shut off when it was at 38%, or around 1/3rd of its supposed battery. it lasted around 4 hours, and didn't flash the green battery light at all around the time it shut off. so, yeah, an 800 mAh battery was a scam, to say the least.



afterwards, i decided to record it charging the battery back up for a bit, and it was even funkier than when it was running the battery down. it would sporadically jump from 0% to 8%, then to 23%, then at around the 30% mark it just rocketed up all the way to 60%. i had stopped recording at that point, but then something funny happened.



uh, charging complete? you sure about that, man? yeah, it said this around the 66% mark, which solidified my theory that it was just a normal psp battery with about 2/3rds of the capacity it was supposed to have.

in conclusion, if you're gonna buy a psp replacement battery, dont buy one that says it anything under or above the 1200-1400 mAh range. if its under, you're gonna have a bad time like i did, and if its over, its literally a lie because, at the size normal psp batteries are, they literally cannot contain something with, say, 3600 mAh, which is what my old psp battery was, and it's most likely a scam. if you want to read up more on info about getting replacement psp batteries, i recommend this reddit post that i referenced when looking for a battery to replace this current one ive been complaining about this entire post.

pretty much this is all just to say, fuck this stupid ass battery it made my psp shut off when i had been playing persona 1 for a long ass time and i didnt save and it made me lose like 2 hours of progress

(back to present-day mot commentary)
so as you can see, the xyab battery is really shoddy and not good at all. so if that's the case, what's your best option for a new PSP battery, if your old one is scuffed? well, after posting that back in June, i decided it might be a good idea to order a new battery. i ended up buying an Ostent 1400mAh PSP battery from Amazon, and though i really don't like giving money to Jeff Bezos by using Amazon (ebay all the way (but dont use the global shipping program (i mostly just mean buy stuff from other people and not through a colossal megacorporation like amazon))) it did end up working like a charm, and it's the best PSP battery i've seen so far. so there's my recommendation.