I was wondering if anyone has bought these cheap camcorder batteries for the JVC GR-D290 which can be found here:

BN-VF733 Batteries on eBay

These batteries are priced at around £14.00 which is much cheaper than the £95 that jvc.co.uk will charge you. I was thinking of getting one as a backup battery and charging it using an external charger.

1. Do they last for about 5-7 hours (3300mah)? as they aren't JVC brand.
2. Are they recognised as JVC data batteries by the camcorder? ie. is the data correct about how much battery charge left?

I know someone's going to say "you get what you pay for" but these batteries seem to be identical to the ones being sold by camcorder battery suppliers for about £50. Not JVC brand eg. Akku brand
So my guess is that these suppliers must get these same batteries for around the same price. The descriptions of these batteries often state "100% compatible" but does this include compatibility with the "Data Battery" function.

Hi all, first post here

I have just bought a JVC 290 and am also looking to buy a couple of spare batteries. Can anyone recommend a good site? and is it important for me to stick with official JVC batts?

Any advice please.

I took a risk and ordered a £13.90 BN-VF733 battery from a Hong Kong supplier on ebay. This is what's printed on the Techstep battery I received.

techstep Lithium-Ion
Digital Video Battery Pack
for JVC VF-733U 7.4V 3500 mAh
Battery Made in Japan

So far its charged up fine (I'm charging it using an external charger) and when I connect it to the camcorder it shows 300 mins with the LCD (and 390 mins with the viewfinder). I'm going to test it to see if it does last 5 hours though. I'll report back here to let you know if the battery did last for the time expected. You can also perform a battery data check and the camcorder is able to communicate fine with this battery.

Also, I got a £16 charger from here:
Battery charger for BN-VF707 BN-VF714 BN-VF733 batteries. Works perfectly.

I've tested the techstep BN-VF733 battery and it lasted about 4.5 hours in LCD mode (although I did do lots of forwarding and rewinding). It takes about 7-8 hours to fully charge the battery with my external charger which sounds about right based on the info in the JVC GR-D290 manual.

I'd recommend charging a non-JVC battery with an external charger and not using the camcorder's built-in charger just to be on the safe side.

A disadvantage of using this large battery is that it gets in the way of the viewfinder. The battery is 56mm in length and when attached to the camcorder sticks out 28mm further than the viewfinder (when the viewfinder is fully extended). This would be true of a genuine JVC BN-VF733 too as it identical in size. However, its excellent in LCD mode and certainly does the job as a backup battery.

I think these Japanese non-JVC batteries are great so I'm going to order two smaller BN-VF707 batteries as I intend to use the viewfinder more than the LCD mode.

I recently bought the JVC GZ-MG50 hard-drive camcorder which uses the same BN-VF range of batteries. Balking at the price of the JVC proprietary batteries (and the fact that the 733 isn't available in the UK yet) I took the risk and ordered 2 different BN-VF707 non-propriety models and a BN-VF733 copy.

Unfortunately none of these are recognised as data batteries by the camcorder.

My question is whether anyone knows of a way to circumvent this feature - I'd rather not know exactly how much time I have left and save £70! At present the camcorder will not even power up if one of these batteries is attached.

If there isn't a way around this, then I have 3 x BN-VF707 and 1 x BN-VF733 non-JVC batteries for sale to any JVC camcorder owner who doesn't have a camcorder with the data battery function.

On a positive note I've found the genuine JVC batteries online for about 75% of the JVC price, but this is still high compared to the eBay prices

Did you charge up your batteries with an external charger?

I did - i got one off eBay when I bought the batteries. the charger is showing them all as fully charged but when I attach them to the camera, I get the message 'connection error' when the camera tries to read data from them.

Looks lik I'm going to have to go with JVC branded batteries at a stupid price.

[lurcher]

Spats,
I know its early days but could you give any feedback on your camera ?. I have been thinking about this model as I need one with extended recording times.
Plus I would require a long life battery (if available).

Thanks

That's strange. I got my batteries from this ebay seller zoo2003yy and the batteries work fine with the GR-D290 and works fine with it's data battery function. Maybe the GZ-MG50 has special circuitry that checks for a genuine JVC battery?