How to determine which UPS Battery Backup to get?

[John K Jordan]

Larry, given that the cost of these things has come down substantially over the past few years...make your life simple and just buy a "big" one.

That's what I do.

1) With a "bigger" unit you also sometimes get better quality. Be careful about things like the sine wave output - some cheap units have an approximation of a sine wave output with lots of high-frequency. These can trigger glitches in sensitive electronic equipment.
2) Buy bigger than you need now. You may decide to add more equipment later.
3) The better devices sometimes have better controls and displays.

My shop office has a WiFi router, a Femto-cell personal cellular tower, and a 4-camera security system plugged into a 1500va UPS. This is much more capacity than I need for these things. However, if I decide to add something else I don't want to have to go buy a bigger unit.

Maybe look for sales. I bought this one 18 months ago on an Amazon lightning deal for a lot less than the current price. I bought a second one just like it for the house.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00429N19W

Even when they are not on sale, these things are a fraction of the cost of the big UPS units I used to put on my 3D graphics computers, monitors, and audio and video editing equipment. I still have some of these old devices gathering dust on their dead batteries - maybe I should revive them and give them to a charity or something.

JKJ

[Larry Browning]

I am looking at this one.
https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Di...CQDSGGRAA9XXMG

[Jim Becker]

Larry, I didn't mean buy a "gonzo big" UPS...I'm just saying, don't over think it. Head to your local Costco, BJs, Sam's, Best Buy, Amazon on line, whatever, and pick out one that's got reasonable capacity and an attractive price. I have three UPSs in our home; one on the primary end where my fiber ONT and access router is, one in my secondary distribution point at "this end" of the house and a larger one that powers my two computers and SIP phone so I can continue to work if we have power loss. The first and last one I mentioned are relatively inexpensive 450va no-name units and the larger one under my desk is a 750va APC.

The Triplite you link to is similar to the two smaller ones I have, but with more capacity. That's a nice unit for a nice price.

[Garth Almgren]

I picked up a Tripp-Lite Smart1000LCD (1000VA) unit from Costco for about $100 a couple years back, and it will run my big PC, dual monitors, cable modem, and wireless router for at least 10 minutes, which is plenty of time to get everything shut down gracefully.
If I needed another one, I'd head over to Costco and see what they have on the shelves - they'll usually have at least one UPS in that price range if not a couple different ones to choose from.

[Alan Rutherford]

...If I needed another one, I'd head over to Costco and see what they have on the shelves - they'll usually have at least one UPS in that price range if not a couple different ones to choose from.

And, inspired partly by this thread, that's what I did. Costco had 2 choices and I got the Cyberpower 625VA/375 Watts for about $47. It claims it will run for about 2 minutes at full load and 8 at half. Not much, but most of our outages are a few seconds. In a pull-the-plug test it kept everything going for about a minute until I put the plug back, and that's all I need.

It's running 2 desktop PC's, 3 monitors, a DSL router, phone base station, a digital clock that is always the first thing to reset with a power wink-out, and a desk lamp that wouldn't reach another outlet.

The installation is ugly on the wall behind my wife's desk, but the desk weighs a ton, is boxed in between a corner and my desk, and had an unreachable jumble of wire and dust on the floor behind it. Now I can reach all the wires and none are on the floor, her Windows PC won't complain about abrupt shutdowns (my Linux doesn't care as much) and she won't always be resetting the clock.


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