[uzi2]

  I am shocked that Hugo battery replacement would cost £250 plus postage.

I think that figure includes a full service and repair to the power supply circuitry as @elviscaprice had broken something in his failed attempt at swapping the batteries.
A simple battery swap carried out by your retailer or local electronics engineer (basically someone who can solder without frying things!) should work out less than £25
Hats off to John for for resolving the issue in such a generous manner...

 

[miketlse]

 
I think that figure includes a full service and repair to the power supply circuitry as @elviscaprice had broken something in his failed attempt at swapping the batteries.
A simple battery swap carried out by your retailer or local electronics engineer (basically someone who can solder without frying things!) should work out less than £25
Hats off to John for for resolving the issue in such a generous manner...

 
The quoted price included "If you want to replace it, that would be a chargeable service. The cost is £210, plus service charge £37.50, plus shipping (depends on address)."
 
A lot probably depends on who performs the servicing/replacement.
Chord have previously quoted a price in the mid £30s for the battery itself, so I assume that is what the £37.50 refers to.
Shipping will vary with each Hugo.
 
For the physical act of replacing the battery, I imagine that the technicians at Chord, who must be assembling Hugos every day, and know the device inside out, would be able to take the back off, unsolder the battery, replace/resolder the battery, then reassemble the Hugo,  could do all that in 5 minutes. Time would get added on if they needed to do a thorough testing, plus if the hugo needed to be carefully repackaged etc. However i would not have thought the overall cost need be excessive.
 
Things are a bit different if all of this is performed by a local electronics engineer, many thousands of miles away from the UK, especially if this person has never seen a Hugo before. Not only will they take longer to perform the replacement, but they will add in time to research exactly what they need to do with the Hugo. So the time taken will be much longer, and much costlier. 
 
@Mojo ideas has made a very generous offer to @elviscaprice so I hope that this gets sorted out to everyones satisfaction quickly.

 

[PhiQuanTu]

 
Grow up, enjoy the fine products without all the histrionics. IF at some point in the future you need to get new batteries then remember that's all they are - just rechargeable batteries and a competent technician in your own country will do it for you at a reasonable cost.

 
Not trying to pick a fight, but you almost made it sounds like we can bring it to Best Buy or somewhere easy to find to get the battery replaced. Is there a directory that we can look up for the "competent technician" in our areas? Even if we can find technicians with solid ironing skills, what are the chances that he has or carries the lithium battery that is in the Chord Hugo?
 
Anyhow, I hope Chord considers something more "standard" for their battery choice in the Hugo 2. Easier to find online and easier to solder/replace. Because BATTERIES WILL EVENTUALLY DIE. It's just a matter of time. Do you want to spend $2,000 on the Hugo and lose its portability in 3 years?

 

[miketlse]

   
Not trying to pick a fight, but you almost made it sounds like we can bring it to Best Buy or somewhere easy to find to get the battery replaced. Is there a directory that we can look up for the "competent technician" in our areas? Even if we can find technicians with solid ironing skills, what are the chances that he has or carries the lithium battery that is in the Chord Hugo?
 
Anyhow, I hope Chord considers something more "standard" for their battery choice in the Hugo 2. Easier to find online and easier to solder/replace. Because BATTERIES WILL EVENTUALLY DIE. It's just a matter of time. Do you want to spend $2,000 on the Hugo and lose its portability in 3 years?

 
Chord did improve the design for the Mojo - batteries are connected by a cable and plug, so any competent technician should be able to perform a battery replacement, providing they have the correct battery to hand. An owner could probably consider it a DIY job, if they were confident.
 
I hope that Chord use a similar philosophy for the Hugo 2, because it would defuse future posts about battery soldering, two years down the line. 

 

[WilliamLeonhart]

 
I debated with myself whether to respond as in many ways that keeps the debate going and what needs to happen is for this to just die as a non event discussion. First off, any item that has rechargeable batteries may at some point require them to be replaced. That's a no-brainer fact of life. If this needs doing on an item that is out of warranty then, just like a car, you decide whether it is worth the cost of getting the manufacturer to do it or whether you just get an aftermarket technician to do it. As far as I know, these are not special batteries in the Chord products. Some require a soldering iron to replace but some don't even require that.
 
So, less of the moral outrage please guys. Grow up, enjoy the fine products without all the histrionics. IF at some point in the future you need to get new batteries then remember that's all they are - just rechargeable batteries and a competent technician in your own country will do it for you at a reasonable cost.
 
The mods have already said they will keep an eye on this thread and take some action if the battery theme persists. How about we just drop it or if you are really bothered, start a new battery thread instead.

I think the "outrage" is not on my side. I've known from the start that yes, the Hugo would need its batter replaced at some point. And in this thread it has been mentioned a few times that the Hugo's battery is not that easy to replaced. I'm sure as hell would like my Hugo to be serviced by Chord themselves. 
As for your concern about this thread, IMHO we have every rights to discuss the battery of the Hugo in this thread. It's not derailing and I don't think we should spend 1000 pages praising the sound of the Hugo -  the English language would run out of words. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I've not insulted anyone here or ask them to bring their concerns over somewhere else.
Anyway, to put this matter to rest, I think Chord's answers so far have been satisfactory except for one regards: what is the official pricing policy for battery replacement? We've been figuring by ourselves, we don't know what are the actual status/statistics of Hugo battery returns, how easy it is to DIY replace the battery etc. That's what's actually unecessary here.
 

   
Chord did improve the design for the Mojo - batteries are connected by a cable and plug, so any competent technician should be able to perform a battery replacement, providing they have the correct battery to hand. An owner could probably consider it a DIY job, if they were confident.
 
I hope that Chord use a similar philosophy for the Hugo 2, because it would defuse future posts about battery soldering, two years down the line. 
 

That is nice. But it doesn't change the fact that a lot of us here have bought the Hugo 1 and will all be affected by Chord's warranty/service pricing warranty.

 

[miketlse]

  I think the "outrage" is not on my side. I've known from the start that yes, the Hugo would need its batter replaced at some point. And in this thread it has been mentioned a few times that the Hugo's battery is not that easy to replaced. I'm sure as hell would like my Hugo to be serviced by Chord themselves. 
As for your concern about this thread, IMHO we have every rights to discuss the battery of the Hugo in this thread. It's not derailing and I don't think we should spend 1000 pages praising the sound of the Hugo -  the English language would run out of words. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I've not insulted anyone here or ask them to bring their concerns over somewhere else.
Anyway, to put this matter to rest, I think Chord's answers so far have been satisfactory except for one regards: what is the official pricing policy for battery replacement? We've been figuring by ourselves, we don't know what are the actual status/statistics of Hugo battery returns, how easy it is to DIY replace the battery etc. That's what's actually unecessary here.
 
That is nice. But it doesn't change the fact that a lot of us here have bought the Hugo 1 and will all be affected by Chord's warranty/service pricing warranty.

 
You want statistics.
 
I challenge you to search the web, and then produce a list of every Hugo battery replacement that you find.
The Hugo had sold over 10,000 units more than a year ago, so must have sold a few thousand more by now.
I predict that the result will be that you will discover, that well under 1% of the Hugo batteries have failed.

 

[WilliamLeonhart]

No I don't want statistics. I think you just misread my post and focused on just one word of it.

 

[warrior1975]

What is the price? That's a simple question. Statistics aside, I would like to know how much it costs, if I were to buy a Chord product and be one of the unlucky ones that needs a battery replaced after warranty. We've seen conflicting prices . I own a Mojo and am very interested in a Hugo or Hugo 2.

 

[miketlse]

What is the price? That's a simple question. Statistics aside, I would like to know how much it costs, if I were to buy a Chord product and be one of the unlucky ones that needs a battery replaced after warranty. We've seen conflicting prices . I own a Mojo and am very interested in a Hugo or Hugo 2.

 
You could haave read post #14657 to have discovered it.
 
The quoted price included "If you want to replace it, that would be a chargeable service. The cost is £210, plus service charge £37.50, plus shipping (depends on address)."

 

[Crashem]

If the price truly is ~£250 for battery change then that is pretty excessive. The fact is lithium batteries will fail. Every Hugo will likely need new battery in ~3 years. So some will be under warranties and some won't. I, as a chord customer, would be happier if cost of battery replacement was closer to actual costs vs another profit center. If they maintain their current pricing and difficulty of replacing a common part, then it will figure into my future purchase decisions regarding their products.

 

[boomtube]

I apologize for posting here, the thread that this concerns isn't frequented often, so I thought of asking here.
 
Just got an HDPLEX 100w power supply for my (12v)  2Qute DAC. 
 
The PLEX powers a 9v reclocker just fine...when I try to power my DAC, no go. The LPS has 4 different sockets
 
5v
9v
12v
19v
 
everything is connected properly...suggestions?

 

[Triode User]

If the price truly is ~£250 for battery change then that is pretty excessive. The fact is lithium batteries will fail. Every Hugo will likely need new battery in ~3 years. So some will be under warranties and some won't. I, as a chord customer, would be happier if cost of battery replacement was closer to actual costs vs another profit center. If they maintain their current pricing and difficulty of replacing a common part, then it will figure into my future purchase decisions regarding their products.

The batteries are rated at 2000 charge cycles. Assuming a charge cycle every single day (which is unlikely for the average user) that equates to an average battery life of 5.4 years. The batteries are simple and are easily available. I have only quickly looked in the UK and they can be bought for £13 each inc tax. On the basis that the Hugo is out of warranty anyway by then I would be very happy doing the swop myself as it is a VERY simple solder job to connect the new batteries to the pc board. For people not happy with a soldering iron I cannot imagine being charged more than half an hour or maybe an hours labour.
 
No one has to spend ~£250 on a battery change by sending the Hugo back to Chord unless you want to. If you have an iPhone that is out of warranty would you insist that on sending it back to Apple? There have been many many thousands of Hugos sold. If the batteries start requiring to be changed then it is certain that specialist companies (for instance the sort that already do smart phone battery work) will start offering Hugo battery changes at a competitive price. The fact that they haven't started offering the service indicates that the batteries are not failing in sufficient numbers to make it a viable business. Any local technician can do the work though.
 
I have owned the Mojo, Hugo, HugoTT and Dave. I like the sound and I don't see the batteries as an issue. But then I regard myself as a reasonable and pragmatic person.
 
It's a free world though so you can buy your next DAC wherever you wish. 

 

[elviscaprice]

 
The batteries are rated at 2000 charge cycles. Assuming a charge cycle every single day (which is unlikely for the average user) that equates to an average battery life of 5.4 years. The batteries are simple and are easily available. I have only quickly looked in the UK and they can be bought for £13 each inc tax. On the basis that the Hugo is out of warranty anyway by then I would be very happy doing the swop myself as it is a VERY simple solder job to connect the new batteries to the pc board. For people not happy with a soldering iron I cannot imagine being charged more than half an hour or maybe an hours labour.
 
No one has to spend ~£250 on a battery change by sending the Hugo back to Chord unless you want to. If you have an iPhone that is out of warranty would you insist that on sending it back to Apple? There have been many many thousands of Hugos sold. If the batteries start requiring to be changed then it is certain that specialist companies (for instance the sort that already do smart phone battery work) will start offering Hugo battery changes at a competitive price. The fact that they haven't started offering the service indicates that the batteries are not failing in sufficient numbers to make it a viable business. Any local technician can do the work though.
 
I have owned the Mojo, Hugo, HugoTT and Dave. I like the sound and I don't see the batteries as an issue. But then I regard myself as a reasonable and pragmatic person.
 
It's a free world though so you can buy your next DAC wherever you wish. 

​2000 charge cycles at optimum cycles.  If you keep your Hugo on and charging 24 hours a day then your using about 3 cycles per day and that comes out to about 2 years.  But since your always topping off the charge, which is never a good thing for a Lipo battery to remain at full charge, shortens the battery life, especially in non use, your probably getting less than that optimum amount of cycles.
I would be more worried about the delicacy of the power/charging circuitry than the actual Lipo batteries themselves and that would require possible replacement along with the batteries.  Making this fix, a Chord only one.
 
This is a tough situation for Chord and I have to commend them for making a case by case flexible fix, which they are doing in my case.  Chord is an outstanding company that stands by their products and I'm sure they will do the right thing when or if anyone needs their service.

 

[Triode User]

I'm glad you edited your post to add in that final paragraph because I thought your response was less than gracious bearing in mind what Chord are doing for you.

 

[Whazzzup]

I got a feeling it will be just you