[garenp]

Not long ago the battery on my Dymo 280 died and was pretty surprised to find that the cost of replacing it (~$30) was about the same as I paid for the product. The battery consists of two small 14430 cells in a plastic package that isn't serviceable.

For awhile I limped along by buying a few cells online and jerry-rigging my own connectors with a soldering iron but after the printer itself finally died recently, I actually replaced it with an _older_ 160 model that uses AAA cells instead - go figure - newer is worse.

[NavinF]

You can blame safety regulations for that. Vape mods are just about the only consumer devices that get away with using raw Li-ion cells. The rest use cartridges or glued-in lipo.

It’s just not economical to make battery cartridges for less than $30 each. You also can’t use the same cartridge design as e.g. a power tool manufacturer since all those designs are patented and they’ll sue you if you make something interchangeable.

[garenp]

Interesting point about raw Li-ion cells - sounds like the result of the exploding hoverboard fiasco years ago(?).

Another unfortunate "feature" was that the device refused to be powered with it's own USB cable. It felt to me like the manufacturer were deliberately trying to limit your options as a customer so that you had to keep re-buying batteries from them - reminding me very much of the situation with printer ink cartridges.

It does feel like there needs to be a better tradeoff between consumer safety and repairability. I can replace nearly every part in my car with an aftermarket part, so why can't we do the same with these little computing devices etc?

[Faaak]

"dumb" AAA cells are safe to use.