HP Spectre x360 not charging - connection works intermittently due to wiggling. Is this fixable?

[metanetsoftware]

hi,

I have recently been having a lot of issues with my 2018 Spectre x360 not charging fully and charging intermittently.

Battery life became horrendous, so I ran the battery diagnostic tool and got a failure code, so I know the battery also needs to be replaced. But that isn't the whole issue: over the past year or so, the light does not come on consistently when I plug in the AC adaptor. If I gently wiggle the AC adaptor cable, sometimes I can get the light to come on and register that it's plugged in, but lately this has not been working at all, or the light turns off soon after and the laptop does not charge. It's become unusable 😕

After some googling, I see this is a common problem with this laptop/port. Is it possible to replace the port? Can I buy the part? Can someone help me with the part number, or ideally some links?

Any help would be very greatly appreciated -- although it's out of warranty, it's a relatively new laptop and has until this point been working very well (ok, except that the down arrow key also stopped working, but I can overlook that) -- I really don't want to have to replace it...

HP Spectre x360 - 13-ap0028ca

5MT98UA

thanks so much,
Mare

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

On that model laptop the power jack is part of the motherboard so there is no relatively inexpensive repair. 

[metanetsoftware]

Darn it! thanks for the info, Huffer. So did HP change this part for subsequent Spectre x360 models, then?

If I have to replace the computer I might still consider the Spectre x360 since I loved using it so much...but I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with the same or similar issue. Do you happen to know which models I should avoid?

thanks again, very much!
Mare

[Huffer]

They make a lot of X360s. Power jack issues are pretty common on all brands of laptops and the trend has been to moving more components to the motherboard so we do not see as many replaceable power jack modules as in years past. Laptops powered through the USB-C port are less prone to loose power jack since there is a smaller plug-in and not as much leverage on the jack. 

[metanetsoftware]

Ah...so it might not be possible to avoid this issue? Hmm, that's disappointing 😕 I wish the trend were going towards user-repairable and easily fixable components! Sigh.

thanks for your help,

Mare