I recently bought a used PSP off Amazon. It came with this battery - new in packaging. It's truly terrible. I put it into my PSP, snapped in its jumbo sized battery door because it's bigger than the normal battery, and it turned on fine. I plug my PSP into my PC to transfer some files. I come back 20 minutes later to see how the file transfer is working and my PSP is turned off. I try flipping the power switch - nothing - set it to charge, flip the switch, and the PSP won't turn on. I leave it to charge for a few hours and still nothing. If I pull the battery out and plug the PSP in then it'll turn on and play normally.

The point of my long-winded post is that I gifted myself a PSP and have no battery with which to play it. I've been searching on Amazon for a replacement, but they all seem to have low ratings, meanwhile the official Sony battery, which I'd imagine is more reliable, is crazy expensive. Are there any batteries which you guys would recommend?

You should try doing a few full charge/discharge cycles.

Leave it charging overnight to fully charge it then leave it to discharge until it completely drains.
Doing this about 3x should condition the battery. If it doesn't work after that, you might just have a bad battery.

Vanelan : I'll give it a shot, but I'm not sure that's possible. The orange charging light will stay lit for all of five minutes then turn off. If I take the battery out and put it back in again it'll turn the light on again for another few minutes. I guess I could rinse and repeat several times, but I'm not sure if it's actually charging or not. For what it's worth, if I go into the battery info page in the PSP settings it doesn't even seem to detect the battery. It says power source: external and shows dashes (--) in the other info fields. From what I can tell, that means dead battery. I'll take your advice and try leaving it plugged in for a few hours then turning it on to see what happens. Thanks for the advice.

When you remove the battery, plug in the charger and turn it on, does it show that same battery info? If it does I'd say it is junk. I don't know what the pricing on the official battery is (I'd shop around a bit), but whatever the price is I bet it is well worth the cost (unless you don't have the money, then I guess you'll have to wait out on it).

bigger0gamer : Yeah, it gives the same info. The official batteries are generally more expensive, and from what I've heard, many of them no longer work. Because of how old they are they're starting to bulge and get deformed. Buying an official one that's in good working condition might be a challenge.

Are you sure it's the battery and not something wrong with the PSP itself? Since you got it used online, there could have been a chance that the PSP had a problem with it. If you do end up getting a new battery (old) then its a risk. EBay would be better than amazon but you might get one that works and you might get one that barely works.

zanderlex : It's definitely a possibility that there's something wrong with the PSP, but visually it's in very good condition. Even the silver ring on the back is only lightly scratched. When I plug it in with the charger it's able to read UMDs, read memory cards, and all of the buttons work just fine. I'm looking at the battery compartment right now and there's no evidence that a battery leaked in there and the leads all looks perfectly straight and clean. It's possible that the PSP is the problem, but the cheap knock-off battery with a reputation to fail seems like the more likely culprit. I'm not really sure how I'd go about testing if it's the PSP, either. I don't have another PSP or know anybody else with a PSP that I can test the battery on.

CthulWho : You mighta just got an old battery. If its a knock-off, its possible it was just poorly constructed and had a shorter life than a PSP battery should be.

I unfortunately don't know where you can find an official battery anymore. Some might say "official" on Amazon or eBay, but you never know...
There is no guarantee an official one would still work either.