The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that HP expanded its recall of the batteries used in some of its notebooks and mobile workstations due to "fire and burn hazards."
HP announced the expanded recall in January. Because of the U.S. government shutdown--which at 34 full days was the longest in American history--the CPSC wasn't able to discuss it on its website until March 12. Now that it has, more people should know about the recall.
The original recall was announced in January 2018 and affected 50,000 battery units. The CPSC said HP received "eight reports of battery packs overheating, melting, or charring, including three reports of property damage totaling $4,500 with one report of a minor injury involving a first degree burn to the hand."
Since then, according to the CPSC, HP received "eight new reports of battery packs in the U.S. overheating, melting, or charring, including one report of minor injury and two reports of property damage totaling $1,100." So the recall has been expanded to "about 78,500" battery units that consumers need to have replaced by HP.
Here are the affected products listed in the expanded recall:
"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."
The CPSC said the batteries were "shipped in notebook computers and mobile workstations sold from December 2015 through April 2018 for between $300 and $4,000 and were also sold separately between December 2015 and December 2018 for between $50 and $90." HP has set up a site with more information about the recall process.
