BACK TO: Home > Camcorder Battery Articles > Customer Review of NP-F960 Sony Camcorder Battery

Customer Review of NP-F960 Sony Camcorder Battery

Camcorder-battery-shop.com 2006-10-26

Here's my experience of what happened with a generic brand of battery that I purchased for my Sony DCR-TRV720.

I purchased two new generic batteries from camcorder-battery-shop.com, and the description on the camcorder-battery-shop.com site included my brand of camcorder (DCR-TRV720) in its compatibility chart. The brand name on the battery packages says: "DIGITAL Camcorder Battery, FOR NP-F960. NP-F960 is the high-end model of Sony's battery line, which has a 12-hour battery life (but costs three times as much as the generic brand).

I placed one of the new batteries in my camcorder when I got home (which I'll call Battery #1), and turned the camcorder on. It told me the battery had a life of about 550 minutes or something like that, so after about a minute of filming, I plugged in the camcorder charger to see how high the charge would go. About a day or so later I turned the camcorder on, and after about 10 seconds a blue screen appeared with the following message: "FOR 'InfoLITHIUM' BATTERY ONLY". This message was popping up at the time that the battery life "MIN" indicator would normally pop up. It was immediately pretty clear that the my camcorder didn't like this generic battery. I assume that it was reporting this message when it was trying to communicate with the battery about remaining battery life, etc.

This is where things got a bit odd. After flicking the camcorder on a few times and getting the error message each time, the message finally stopped at one point. To see if it was just a fluke, I turned off the camcorder and turned it back on, and the battery was still working fine. I did this a bunch more times, and it seemed to be working with out any problems.

Now things get very strange. I took the other identical generic camcorder battery I bought (which I'll call Battery #2) and put it in the camcorder. When I turned the camcorder on, I got the error message again. I kept turning the camcorder on again and again, occasionally waiting a bit longer to turn it on, and still I kept getting the message. So I tried putting Battery # 1 back in, and it worked just fine, even after switching it on and off a few times. I'd put Battery # 2 back in, and again with the error message. I switched batteries a few times, just to make sure that it wasn't a coincidence, but concluded that Battery # 1 is definitely working (for now) and Battery # 2 is not.

That being said, I hadn't yet charged Battery # 2 before using it. However, when I initially put the battery in, it did give me an indication of well over 700 min. And even if it were a matter of Battery #2 just not having a sufficient charge and giving a false reading about the minutes, how come Battery #1 was initially giving me the problem when I started using it after a full day of charging?

This all just happened tonight, so I don't know whether or not I'm going to have a happy ending to all this. I'm leaving for a one-week vacation tomorrow, and will be taking the two generic batteries with me.

Will Battery #1 continue to work? Will the problem return after its next recharge?

Will Battery #2 ever work? Perhaps after I fully charge it, it might begin to work as Battery #1 did.

To be honest, I will likely go out and purchase a lower-life Sony brand battery in case my generic batteries fail during vacation. From my experience so far, I would recommend to people that you shell out a bit more money and buy the brand recommended by your camcorder manufacturer's manual. I wouldn't necessarily recommend following "camcorder compatibility charts" that accompany the sale of generic batteries, as they're not necessarily accurate.

That being said, I'll try to remember to come back to this forum when I get back from my vacation so I can post the results of my vigorous testing with the generic batteries over the next week. I'm still holding out hope that the generic batteries might somehow work out.

Sorry for the verbose post. I just figured that if I posted as much details as possible, someone's analytical mind might be able to piece together how one of two identical generic camcorder batteries could seemingly "learn" to fool my Sony camcorder into thinking that it was an "InfoLITHIUM" battery.