31
votes
UPS recommendations for home use?
I have traditionally used APC's UPS products for my NAS, router, media centre and desktop computer. Nothing fancy, just something to survive short power outages and to allow graceful shutdowns if such an outage lasts longer than a few minutes.
Unfortunately, I have had three of APC's devices malfunction in the past decade and while their customer support has always been excellent, I would prefer products that just work and don't cause me additional headaches. Do you know of any UPSs that you would recommend for home use and are reasonably priced? I'm located in the EU, if that makes a difference.
I use a combination of Tripp-Lite (Eaton) rack-mounts and Vertiv Liebert tower units. I have no complaints with either. I don't really use any "fancy" features; true sine-wave and line-interactive were the features I cared about.
I also had an APC unit that failed (however it was a cheap backup-only unit that served its purpose so no hard feelings).
I do not consider Cyberpower due to their handling of https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cyberpower-upses-reportedly-pose-fire-hazard
I am also anti Cyberpower. They have a 2yr warranty on their units, iirc. I was outside of that window and the UPS malfunctioned. It repeatedly clicked off and on, which killed a couple of RAID1 volumes I had. But it didn't just take out the data, it also killed the drives.
I reached out to them about their insurance, as I anticipated it would be similar to what is advertised with a surge protector. They said since the warranty was up, their connected equipment policy no longer applied. So if one of their UPSs burns your house down a day after your warranty is up, they'll say it's your fault for using it while out of warranty.
This most likely won't fit your use case based on what you have said so far, but just in case you weren't aware and maybe it would fit other factors that you hadn't considered, you could also look at non-traditional UPS systems that use LifePO4 batteries and these are usually called power stations/solar generators.
Here's an example
https://www.ecoflow.com/us/river-3-plus-portable-power-station
That one is fairly pricey, I just came up with a brand off the top of my head and picked the first result I found so there could certainly be better deals, but that just gives an idea of the type of product.
The main advantage to these is that they have longer lasting batteries and larger battery capacities. My limited understanding is that the battery chemistry for these is such that they can't output their capacity as quickly as lead-acid, so an equal capacity of LifePO4 would not be able to power on all the same devices as a lead-acid would be, therefore to get similar power output capabilities it would necessitate a larger capacity, and as a byproduct also gives you greater on-time in the event the power does go out.
For traditional UPS systems, I own 5 Cyberpower UPS units and had no issues with any of them other than the lead-acid battery dying which isn't really an issue of the UPS, just a matter of whether or not you proactively replace the battery before it dies and don't experience an issue or wait until the battery dies and the potential issue that causes before replacing it. Some of those are the beefier units that I paid $100 or more for. It's worth noting that almost all of these are in storage for me right now, they're effectively useless to me, and I ended up buying a power station for my current living situation though I am not using it for UPS functionality. So basically I mentioned the non-traditional UPS because if they had existed at the price point they do now back when I bought the other UPS systems and I had come across them, I may have valued that more for the versatility of use case they offer and I wouldn't have a bunch of the lead-acid UPS systems sitting in storage right now.
Also with regards to the other comment and the link to CyberPower UPS fires, when I was researching UPS units, almost all of them seemingly had poor reviews here or there because they burst into flames or the unit melted or such. Between APC and Cyberpower especially I saw that, but also Tripp-lite and others had those issues and more. At my former workplace we had a few Tripp-lite units for very important devices that needed high uptime, and those tripp-lites would literally just randomly power off or have some other issue. And you can find this in reviews online that other people experienced it too.
maybe something like this?
https://www.ebay.de/itm/326568987529
If you want something that doesn't stop working, buying something commercial-grade but refurbished can often be a good value. (I'm not sure if this phrase applies to the above.)
I've had good luck with cyberpower but sometimes you just get unlucky. Batteries fail over time just like hard drives so there is some aspect of bathtub curve at play here
I’ve never had a UPS fail on me, regardless of brand. I’ve used tons of APC models at work and home and never had an issue. We also use Eaton and they’re slightly better build quality wise.
I’d say if you want to avoid APC, try Eaton. They have a few sub brands too.
I don't have much personal experience, but it sounds like you've been unluckier than average. Is there good airflow where you're using the UPS? Could it be overheating?
I don't think it's an airflow problem as the failed units have been on desks and shelves with plenty of space around them. I may just have been unlucky (someone has to be a statistic outlier), or perhaps our house's electricity wiring does something to these devices. I have a feeling that the person who did our electricity knew even less about electricity than I do, and the full range of my understanding of electricity is pretty much: plug connectors into similarly shaped holes.
I must stress that over the years, APC has been excellent in their customer service so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone. They replaced one faulty unit, fixed another one even if that one was outside of the warranty period, and handled all of the related shipping to a point where I just had to hand over boxes to couriers. But I still think that my next UPS will be from a different company, to see if that makes any difference in terms of reliability.
Fortunately, I now have lots of options to consider, as there have been plenty of good suggestions in this topic from everyone. Thank you, all!
Just because someone needs to be unlucky doesn't make it fun when it's you. I didn't mean to come off as accusatory if I did. Just one of those troubleshooting things that it's easy to forget about.
Here's hoping the next one is better
Oh, it never even crossed my mind that your comment would have been doing anything other than trying to help! Absolutely no accusatory tone detected from my part. :)
It's often good to remind about basics. It may well happen that a couple of years from now someone stumbles into this topic from a web search, reads your comment, slaps their forehead, moves their UPS out of a tight cabinet and saves a lot of hassle as well as a hundred euros or so.
I just got a CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD (Sinewave, 1000VA/600W) and its been great so far. All of the lights can be covered up and it runs silent. The software itself isn't anything special, but its enough to keep a system on for a few minutes and send a shutdown signal if needed. This is my only sinewave one. I've got three other APCs that are fine -- but nothing special.
I recently spent entirely too much time researching these after a power event killed one of my server drives. My use case is basically the same as yours. As I recall, I looked into lithium, but the consumer available products had too high of a switch over time for me to feel it was a wise investment.
This was the purchase my research into brands, features, tech, and software ultimately brought me.
https://www.vertiv.com/en-us/products-catalog/critical-power/uninterruptible-power-supplies-ups/liebert-psa5-ups/