I work as a network technician and have used APC equipment for many years. Their high-end units have always done well for us. For many years, I also used their Smart-UPS brand for my home network needs. As they've become old and had problems, it became more economical to replace them, instead of fixing them, especially, since for my desktops, the industry was moving to USB for signaling, and away from serial ports. My rack still has older 1400 VA SU units using SNMP management cards, but I needed a new desktop solution.
For the past three years, I stuck to APC's consumer products and have been very disappointed. They have more problems than the older units I've grown to love, and because they change models so often, it's harder to find a battery replacement. Plus, they just have a sort of cheapness about them.
With my latest computer purchase, a dual quad Mac Pro, my older 800VA APC just couldn't handle it. So, I decided to try this Cyberpower 1500 and have been very pleased with it, using it for about 2 months so far. The signaling and reported time is more reliable than the APC I was using. Although it should be said, any consumer UPS will not guarantee exact runtimes, load measurements, etc. - For what you are paying for this amount of capacity, some sacrifice must be realized. If you do your calculations correctly, and use it as needed (surges, brown-outs and limited black-outs), these units will fulfill your needs. If you need super accurate measurements and reliable AC power generation, then you should consider a high end unit, such as what APC offers for data centers.
The load reading for this unit, when measured with a Kill-A-Watt is pretty accurate. I like the soft blue lighting with auto-off. I connect my two, 24" LCDs to the APC 800VA unit, and the Cyberpower handles the Mac Pro with three, external FireWire drives with no problems. Testing it, by turning off the circuit breaker (shouldn't pull the cord from the wall), reports about 20 minutes of runtime, which seems about right. I've left it on battery power for about 10 minutes, and the readings remained fairly constant. I live out in the country at the end of our power grid, so I get a lot of "dirty" power. Brown-outs are common, and my larger UPS units have the ability to generate statistical logs each day of the power fluctuation. I feel pretty safe with this unit, and wouldn't hesitate to purchase another one.
Lastly, the software both Cyberpower and APC provides for the Mac OS, is really bad! I prefer to just use the Mac's SysPrefs to configure the UPS settings and leave it at that. Both companies desperately need a re-write of their OS X software. Cyberpower CP1500AVRLCD UPS - LCD Display 1500VA/900W AVR 8-Outlet RJ11/RJ45/Coax Tower USB
I've had this device for ~3 months and during that period the power has gone out twice for many hours and has "blinked" 5 or 6 times. Half the outlets in the back of the unit provide battery power and surge protection and the other half are just surge protection. I have my Dell XPS710 PC, 20" LCD, and two external USB drives connected to the battery power and my router, modem, speakers and printer connected to the surge protected outlets. It kept my machine running for over 25 mins. when the power went out. My XPS710 is a big gaming rig, so that is just fine. All I need is enough time to finish whatever I'm doing and shut down properly. My PC ran without a hiccup. Same with the power "blinks." They do not affect my PC at all. Plus, it keeps track of all the outages. For a lesser PC, this unit would probably sustain power for much longer. I highly recommend it for protecting any important equipment.
Also, the software will automatically shut down your PC at a pre-set time (i.e., 5 mins of battery power left) in case you lose power when you are not home. Don't forget to download the latest version of the PowerPanel software at the CyberPower website.
Lots of power and big battery for the price. But:
At setup I noticed the display of time remaining was about 91 min. with no load connected. With a very modest load (46W for a DSL modem, Router and new 20" iMac) it showed about 70 min. This was way less than the advertised 170 min. I called CyberPower tech support and got a lot of "I don't know" and was told I would never see numbers as high as 170 min. So I put it to the test. After the first 60 min. "time remaining" droped only 10 min. The "time remaining" display is not linear. The second 60 min. showed a 35 min. drop. Sometime in the third hour it ran out of battery.
I believe the advertised values are a little optimistic but it should be close to the advertised value. I'll bet the chips in the box were calibrated for a smaller unit with less battery so they show low numbers. I wish tech support would have not tried to obscure the display issue.
I want to start by saying that I love the little LCD display with the ability to see how many watts I'm using and the remaining battery time (both without needing to install any software).
However,
1) Both the box and their website say typical runtime up to 170 minutes. I don't want to call it False Advertising, but it's certainly misleading. I've now plugged in two of these units and, after fully charged, the highest remaining battery time is 100 minutes. That's with nothing plugged in so it could never be greater than 100 minutes.
In my case, I have a Dell Dimension 8250 and an LG 24" LCD (turned down to 4% brightness which significantly reduces power consumption). My system uses 144 watts and I get 39 minutes of backup time. That's better than I got with my previous, similarly priced APC model. However, 144 watts is like two light bulbs and it's sad that the modern state of personal UPSes can only power two light bulbs for 39 minutes, and I paid $170 for this.
2) There's no way to completely silence the alarms. First, if the unit's battery is completely drained, you have to remember to manually silence the alarms again when you turn it back on (unless you install their software). Second, even after you do this, the alarms will still sound during the last fifteen to twenty minutes of battery life. As far as I can tell there's NO WAY to prevent this, not on the UPS and not with the software. You can silence the initial alarms, but not the final ones.
My request to all UPS manufacturers: consider the people who buy UPSes that cost less than $200 -- mainly home users and possibly small businesses. These UPSes are not located in a corporate data center, these are in homes where people sleep. The last thing I care about in the middle of the night is if the power goes out. I certainly don't want my UPS to wake up the whole family.
Please give us an easy way to permanently silence all alarms, without needing to install any software, and that continue to remain always silent, no matter what. Even a DIP switch would be great.
3) I wouldn't count on using the telephone/coax surge-suppressing jacks on this unit. Maybe they'll work for you, maybe not. I couldn't use the telephone jack because it created a lot of noise on the phone line (FWIW I don't have DSL either).
I also couldn't use the coax jack. Actually I was using it for several days in the beginning, but then a couple of techs from Comcast Cable showed up at my door and said they'd traced signal noise in my neighborhood to my house. They insisted that I remove the coax from this UPS. (FWIW they said this wouldn't matter because Comcast supposedly has surge protection outside of people's houses.)
Despite my mixed feelings about this UPS, I would probably recommend and purchase this model again in the future because I haven't been able to find anything better in the market in this price range. It's the lesser of the evils. I've had too many problems with APC models, so I hope to avoid APC while their quality remains inferior. - Avr - Cyberpower - Surge Protector - Battery Backup'
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