When good camera batteries go bad – I bought fakes, but I've only just found out

I switched from a Nikon D750 DSLR to a Z 6II mirrorless camera back in 2020. One thing became immediately obvious – I needed more back-up batteries. At the time, the then-new Nikon EN-EL15c was so expensive I felt like they should have been gold-plated, and they were hard to get hold of anyway.

Thankfully (or so I thought) eBay came to my rescue with a great deal on the previous generation of EN-EL15b batteries, which are 100% compatible with the Z 6II and other newer cameras. Better still, they were ‘genuine’ Nikon batteries, at just a quarter of the usual price. But as the saying goes, ‘if something looks too good to be true, it probably is’.

It all started so well. The batteries arrived all the way from China in double-quick time. The first sign that something wasn’t quite right was that, instead of being shipped in Nikon packaging, they were enclosed in cheap plastic toy cars. Very odd, but I figured the seller was probably trying to avoid higher shipping costs for dispatching batteries rather than plastic toys, or dodging customs duty.

Even so, I took a long and careful look at the batteries. Reassuringly, they looked exactly the same as previous genuine Nikon EN-EL15b batteries that I already had, including the color, the Nikon logo, all the printed text and even the holographic Nikon sticker on the back. The proof of the pudding was that they worked flawlessly in my Z 6II and other cameras including my subsequent Z 7II . No problem, or so I thought.

It all went wrong when I picked up a review sample of the Nikon Z 6III the other day. It came with a flat battery but I was so eager to get started, I put the battery on charge and slipped in one of ‘genuine Nikon’ EN-EL15b batteries. No dice. An error message on the screen popped up immediately, saying ‘The battery is unable to provide data to the camera and cannot be used. For safety, choose a battery designated for use in this camera’. Dammit! Some mistake I thought, so I tried them in a friend’s Nikon Z f .  Same problem.

My previous EN-EL15b batteries worked absolutely fine, which leaves me with one conclusion. I’ve bought a set of 4 fake batteries from an eBay supplier based in China. Now I look more closely, all 4 batteries have exactly the same serial number, and that’s clearly not right.

The phrase ‘false  economy’ springs to mind, or perhaps ‘rip-off’. I do love a bargain, but not this time around. There is one silver lining. I’m get paid to write opinion pieces like this, so I’ll be able to put the money towards a new battery and hope I get the real deal!

Check out our guide to the best camera batteries