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HP is recalling even more laptop batteries for ‘fire and burn hazards’

HP is recalling even more laptop batteries for ‘fire and burn hazards’

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The government shutdown interfered with the news getting out in a timely fashion

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Spectre 13 second generation (2017)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Some HP laptops continue to suffer from faulty batteries that may cause “fire and burn damage,” according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. As noted by CNET and Tom’s Hardware, this most recent HP battery recall was first initiated in January of 2018 and then expanded in January of this year, but that most recent development failed to make headlines because the government shutdown interfered with the CPSC’s ability to communicate the expansion.

“This recall expansion was previously announced independently on January 17, 2019 by the firm due to US government furlough,” reads the CPSC’s website dedicated to the HP recall, which was updated on Tuesday of this week to include news of the most recent January 2019 expansion.

The new recall date is now March 12th, 2019, and it includes an additional 28,500 laptop battery units on top of the 50,000 initially announced back in early 2018. According to the CPSC, “HP has received eight new reports of battery packs in the US overheating, melting, or charring, including one report of minor injury and two reports of property damage totaling $1,100.”

Here’s a full list of the models, which includes some laptops HP sold as early as April 2015 and as late as December of last year:

The recall expansion involves lithium-ion batteries for HP commercial notebook computers and mobile workstations were sold to businesses and other organizations. The batteries were shipped with or sold as accessories for HP ProBooks (64x G2 and G3 series, 65x G2 and G3 series, 4xx G4 series), HPx360 (310 G2), HP Pavilion x360 11inch 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.

Faulty battery woes have long plagued HP laptops, with seemingly annual recall announcements and expansions dating back to 2016 and totaling nearly 250,000 units. It’s not exactly clear what the main issue is here. But HP has a website set up for helping customers figure out if their computer has a faulty battery and guiding them through the process of submitting it for a complimentary replacement.

Correction: A previous version of this article said HP is recalling laptops. That is incorrect; HP is recalling laptop batteries, not the computers themselves. The headline has been updated to reflect this fact. We regret the error.