I’ve had my trusty (refurbished) Kobo Libra H2O for about 8627 years and recently it started to act up a bit. It would charge to 100% battery capacity and within an hour or so the device would have an empty tank, begging for a charge again.
I figured the battery was likely on the way out, yet when I took a look at search results for replacing the Kobo Libra H2O battery, I became slightly daunted by the fact it would appear to be a trickier task than I first envisaged.
It wasn’t that replacing the battery was a particularly risky or complex task. It’s not, so long as you can use a soldering iron to remove and reattach the Lithium Ion battery, and even then it’s only two blobs of solder (plus an outer shell of glue on each) that you need to work with.
The problem seemed to be in tracking down a suitable replacement battery, and at the same time, finding a replacement that didn’t cost a fortune. I confess at one stage I nearly gave up and looked for a new eReader.
Saved by Ali Express
After a good while checking search results, I stumbled upon a reddit post which detailed the battery I would need to search for, and more importantly, said battery could be had for a pittance on Ali Express.
Indeed, a few moments later I was able to pin down a suitable replacement battery for my Kobo. In fact, given how large a trove Ali Express is, I was surprised to find only two search results appeared for the battery.
I’ve popped a link to the exact battery I purchased here for you (alternatively, search for: PR-158098N Battery For Kobo).
The shipping arrival date said it would get here in January 2026! Amazingly, just a couple of weeks after placing the order in early November 2025, it arrived.
Replacing the Kobo Libra H2O Battery
The battery arrived safely and in a sturdy cardboard box. Packed in were a couple of 3M adhesive strips to situate the battery on the main board, and a pack of pry tools. I have bags upon bags of these so just put them in the pile already gathered in my tool sort box.
The process is fairly straight-forward, which I will outline as follows:
- Use the pry tools to pry and unclip the back case from the device. I used the large, ridged, guitar pick tool. Wedge open a small piece of the casing and then run the pick around the line of the case and it should all unclip fairly quickly and easily.
The battery is fairly malleable but do be careful not to squish and pull and prod at it too much!
- With the back case removed, take a soldering iron (heated to around 350 degrees Celcius) and detach the positive and negative wires. Two things to note here a) the solder blobs have a thin glue shell coating over them, so heat with the iron and use a pair of tweezers or similar to scrape away the glue layer, you can then melt the solder easily, and b) remember the polarity when you install the new battery!
- Install the new battery, noting the correct polarity. I made sure to strip the new wires a little further back and then tinned them prior to seating them in their final positions.
Once installed, plug in your Micro USB charging cable and check to see does the device power on and if it is accepting a charge.
- Once you have confirmed it is successfully powering on, charging and holding a charge, you can start to button it all back up!
Pop the two strips of adhesive on to the back of the new battery and situate it on the main board. I should add, I did not remove the existing adhesive as I felt it would be beneficial to leave it in place in case the provided adhesive wasn’t as good as the OEM.
Snap the rear case back on, press the power button and all being well you should have your Kobo Libra H2O back up and running with a fresh new battery, ready for many more books to devour!
Hopefully the battery will prove to be worth the time and trouble and provide me with many more hours (nay years, or is that a stretch to far?) of reading pleasure.
I hope this little guide proves helpful for someone else who stumbles upon it. These days we are far too quick to jump on board the obsolesence train. I think that eReader technology hasn’t made big enough leaps to justify upgrading just yet – even the new colour eReaders, which is why I decided to give my Kobo a new life with a fresh battery.
Fingers crossed it doesn’t fail on me a few days from now but so far it is looking good, is charging rapidly and more importantly is holding that charge (for now). Best of luck!
73.