This is a well thought out little kit including the instruction DVD, the little pry tool, and the little screw driver along with the battery. (You can preview the instruction DVD on Youtube just search for "Replace Nook Color battery")
I haven't had a chance to test the battery life yet...if it suffers, I'll knock this review down a star, but at this point, $30+ sure beats having to find a certified Barnes and Noble tech, and paying a fortune for the battery replacement on my Nook Color.
Couple of things about the kit and the video:
1. Do this over a soft towel so you don't scratch the front, and to keep teensy screws from rolling away.
2. The back cover is pretty tricky to get off despite the ease shown in the video. Try easing up the edge on one of the long sides, starting at the open corner as demonstrated in the video. The little tabs that hold the long edges in place are a bit shorter than the ones on the short sides. When you put the cover back on at the end, ease the short sided tabs in first, then snap in the long side tabs.
3. B&N is putting strips of that uber-sticky tape holding down the back cover as well so you might have to work a bit to pry it up. (Which is probably why it was not coming off easily.)
4. Once you get the back cover off remove, or cover, that tape. (Just rub it to get it off. It will save you time the next time you have to replace the battery. If you want to, you can just lay a tiny strip of scotch tape down over it instead.)
5. The little screwdriver in my kit was NOT magnetic and it would have helped a lot to get those tiny screws out of the unit if it had been. They can be pried out with the little pry bar after loosening if you are careful not to fling them across the room.
6. A note of caution about the connectors: Those two very small connectors lift UP, you do NOT pull them out in the direction of the wires! Of course you can't see what the heck is going on down there, because the folks at B&N have stuck little bits of adhesive foam on top of the connectors.
Bad news is, the adhesive on the foam just gooeyed up the works and made one of the connectors stick so that the wires from the old battery just pulled out of the connector, leaving the plastic bit stuck in the receptacle. I was finally able to pry that out, but I was afraid I was going to damage the pins. That was when I learned that the connectors lift up and do not pull out. If it had happened on the other connector it would have been a real problem, but since I was replacing the battery anyway, the fact that the old battery lost it's connector was not a big deal. The other connector has a bit of ribbon tied around it, to facilitate disconnecting it, but you have to pull that foam off to see it.
Either way, lose the foam on both connectors it gets in the way of you seeing what you are doing.
Knowing what I do now, after pulling off that foam and trying to clean off any leftover adhesive, I would probably try to thread a thin bent wire (florist's wire?) of some kind under the wires, and use that to help pull the connector up, but you can also probably just do it with an edge of the pry bar if you are careful. Just remember to pry up. And if you want to make life really easy next time, tie a bit of thread loosely around the battery connector wires right next to the plastic before you install it.
When you put the new battery in, the connectors have to be aligned over the receptacle and then just pressed down. On the back of the connectors is a series of little grooves cut into the plastic. Align those over the pins and then press down. It's really not hard to connect them, even with the small tolerance. (Once you get them aligned, you can use the pry bar or any thin tool to gently push them down.)
7. Prying up the old battery from the case is a pain, because of the tape strips, but you CAN bend the battery. It is flexible. Use the pry bar....you won't hurt anything. It's going to make an awful noise, but there is a metal plate under the battery to protect the electronics.
8. Once you get the old battery off of the plate, cover those strips of sticky tape with either masking tape or scotch tape to keep from having to do this again.
9. The new battery is smaller....once you install it and have made the connections, tape the new battery down with a long piece of masking tape or two, over the TOP of the battery. It will hold it in place and keep it from rattling around, but you won't have any trouble taking it off in the future.
10. Turn the unit on before you put all the screws back in, to make sure that the connections are solid, and make sure that all of the electronics are in place before putting the cover back on.
(Line up the power plug receptacle end first when putting it back together.)
Okay, that's about it.....it didn't take more than about an hour, even with having to pry out that damaged connector, so it's a pretty good deal.
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Worked as advertised, installation was not trivial but manageable with care. If you've never done something like this before work it slowly and expect the plug alignment to be a bit more troublesome than the video shows. I'll also repeat what others have said the original battery takes some work to extract from the double sided tape, don't be surprised if you end up bending the original battery to get it out it's pliable.
My only disappointments and thus the 4 stars: The connector lead from the battery might be a bit longer to facilitate working the connector. And the replacement battery shows it to be 3200mAh, while the original I removed showed it as 4000mAh. I'll reserve judgement on battery life, has to be better than the original. 2 years old and my wife only got 20 minutes without having to recharge on the original.
I did appreciate that the tools were perfect, particularly the magnetized screwdriver. Do be sure to test the buttons before final assembly, my power switch moved and had to be realigned!
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Since the day I got my Nook Color, I had problems with short battery charge. I didn't realize I got a new product with a bad battery until I replaced it with the NewPower99 battery. Even though this battery is rated with about 20% lower capacity than the official battery, my uptime more than doubled, and during periods of low use I'm getting roughly four times the life that I got with my original battery. Very nice upgrade.
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It was a challenge to replace the old battery with the NewPower99 and after all that work, it doesn't last any longer than the old one did.
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I was able to read the directions and install the battery in a fairly short time and it still works fine.
