Ultra Products 1200 Watt Uninterruptible Power Supply

[Apoptosis]

When it comes to building computers I'd say it is safe to say that many people forget to include an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) with their purchases. With rolling blackouts, hurricanes, storms and other natural disasters becoming more frequent the need for a UPS is something that will save you headaches down the road. Let's take a look at the Ultra Products 2000VA UPS!



Article Title: Ultra Products 1200 Watt Uninterruptible Power Supply
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/367/1/

[Bio-Hazard]

Nice review, it's sort of strange that it discharged so quickly under such a light load..............
Have you tried cycling the charge a few times (fully draining and recharging) to see if that hepls out any???????

[Apoptosis]

not yet... It's been nearly 18 hours and the battery still is not at 100% capacity.

[Dragon_Cooler]

yeah i am one for UPS's so excellent review!!!! I have a 900va and a 1000va Belkin for my computers and monitors. I think i might have to go in and test them. Do you know if you really have to go in and drain them each month?

[Illuminati]

I'm used to seeing UPS's that are rated to 20-30 minutes... so i was surprised to see that it was rated at 90 or even just 65 minutes for that matter.

Does Ultra have anything to say about falling so far short of their ratings?

[Apoptosis]

I have been in contact with Ultra a number of times today and their first reply was:

Already sent an email asking why the box and site says two different things for how long the battery lasts and neither one seem to be right!

and when it comes to sending samples out:

I think I need to figure out what's going on before I send anymore out.

and for the short battery life:

It'll take some time to hear back about the battery life/recharge time. That email went to Taiwan and they're 12 hours ahead, so I probably won't hear anything until tomorrow.

[KnightRid]

APC Back-UPS NS 1250 over here

I wont build a computer for ayone without a UPS anymore! It is amazing how often the power drops below the threshhold, or goes above!


Mike

dont leave home without one

forogt - do you really have to drain them monthly? I never heard that....hmmmm hope someone can answer this.

[infinitevalence]

yeah i find it hard to suggest people buy this product until the advertesed specs are either corrected or the unit made to reach thoes specs.

I find it totaly unacceptable that the unit did not reach more than 50% of the time under a 15% load. Thats just pathetic. I think you were far to kind to ultra here, not that i want to do ultra in but they need to stop advertsing things that their products cant do. you put a real load on that say a 17" CRT and an intel P4 or D and watch your time drop to 10min.... seeing as the average computer user is still using a CRT and P4 processor i think that would be a better idea of what it can do.

[kenc51]

Alot of batteries need to discharge and recharge alot of times to reach full performance! I might be the reason for such low performance

[Illuminati]

Alot of batteries need to discharge and recharge alot of times to reach full performance! I might be the reason for such low performance

I don't know much about batteries, but if this is the case, then this should be part of Quality Control so the consumer gets a product that works as marketed out of the box.

It has always been my experience that rechargable batteries lose longevity between charges as time goes on.

[kenc51]

Alot of batteries need to discharge and recharge alot of times to reach full performance! I might be the reason for such low performance

I don't know much about batteries, but if this is the case, then this should be part of Quality Control so the consumer gets a product that works as marketed out of the box.

It has always been my experience that rechargable batteries lose longevity between charges as time goes on.

For sure.......@ least they should mention in the instructions you need to recharge/discharge a few times...........I'm only guessing if you need to though.
It might be something else......notice the picture of the back? It has a number of outputs..........Mayby there is a combined wattage split accross each sockett. There are 4 outputs for backup power.......divide that by 4 and you have ~ 300W each........the system draws just under 200W so that would sound about right, no?
I'm sure Ultra will clear thiings up when they get back in touch with Nate....

It doesn't look good eitherway

[jonnyGURU]

The batteries in UPS's are sealed lead acid and do not have a "memory" like NiCd's do.

They have long shelf lives and do not need to be discharged when stored. They can be constantly topped off without risk of degrading the battery.

[mattchess]

I purchased the 1200 W Ultra for my XPS 710, which has a 1000 W power supply. I have had it for a little over a week now and I am very happy with it, but I can confirm your results regarding backup duration.

My machine is a quad-core factory overclocked to 3.2 with two nvidia 8800 GTX's and 4 gb ram. So it has a higher load than your test system, but my results are proportionately consistent.

At 30 to 35% load with a game running in the background, a virus scan, word, excel, outlook and opera, which is a pretty realistic load for me...

After 6 minutes I was down around 58% capacity. Shortly after that windows automatically shut down.

The 7 minutes or so was more than enough time to exit whatever I was doing, save my work etc. - so that is good. But I think I am going to tweak my settings to delay the automatic windows shutdown by a few minutes to get me to around 10 minutes of time. It looks like I could probably get 15 minutes without worry based on the discharge rate and your own results - but I want some margin for a higher load since sometimes I may be higher and 10 minutes will be enough time for my purposes.

So I think that this is a good UPS for the XPS 710, and I am happy with its features and form factor (it is pretty compact compared to other UPS I have seen). The software works and seems to be accurate. Just recognize it is a 10 to 15 minute backup time under a realistic load, which for my purposes is enough. At the price, it is hard to beat. I got mine next day shipped for under $300 and that is about half what other over 1000 W UPS' cost disregarding the shipping - and many of them only advertise 15 minute back up times anyway.

[Apoptosis]

Just to update everyone I have a pair of these... one on my personal system (overclocked Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 with 4GB memory and a 7900GTX) and on the test bench and both have worked great. Just last week in one day I had three brown outs and they did the job perfectly.

I second the ~15 minute shutdown time, but that's enough for me.

[mattchess]

I just realized you are in St. Louis (I am new to your site...found it while searching for a UPS actually)....if anyone can say something intelligent about a UPS it is someone living there!

Just wanted to hijack the thread to say I think you have a great site

Thanks for your efforts.

[liqnit]

Good review
I wonder (after looking at the prices) why not use 2 * 1000VA ups instead of the 2000VA ?
is it possible to connect 2 in line? ( one UPS o another)?

[mattchess]

I don't know for sure...but I don't think you can daisy chain UPS'. I think if you did, the one plugged into the outlet would govern.

I do know that the manual warns against daisy chaining the UPS with a power strip.

I think its an excellent UPS...that was poorly advertised. No one else claims such a long backup time. It seems to me they used a configuration as the basis for their estimate for their lowest member of their product line and then made estimates for the high end based on the same configuration. That was just stupid...

But it is still the best value in a 1000 + W UPS as far as I could find. 10 to 15 minutes for a high end PC is plenty (my opinion).

[Kougar]

Good review
I wonder (after looking at the prices) why not use 2 * 1000VA ups instead of the 2000VA ?
is it possible to connect 2 in line? ( one UPS o another)?

Very bad idea... Here's a few dozen reasons why ;) http://www.xyzcomputing.com/index.php?o ... &Itemid=26

[Darkstar]

nice review, i'm a big fan of APC though using 2 1400 smartups and one 1000 smartups. All the units at my work are APC , and havent had problems.

[stereo55]

Interesting read .

I have a APC 1500 (850watt) Back-up , thats rated to 110min , but in real life comes down to about 32-35min using 210 watts from my Opty 165 rig and a 22" lcd . The power did go out shortly after I purchased the unit for about 25-30min and got down to the last 7-10 minutes back-up of before the house power restored . I must admit though , the APC recharge time was pretty quick ; at about 25-30minutes . 15hrs+ recharge time on the reviewed unit is quite long in comparison .

I did play BF2 on a test of my 1500 and boy did the power get drained then (about 50% faster) , but it was using about 400+watts , with no thanks from my 8800GTS