Customer Reviews

APC Back-UPS ES 500 Backup Battery and Surge Protector

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This power supply will run my equipment for 21 minutes, more than long enough for me to switch to a back up generator. If I ignore the power outage, it automatically backs up files. In addition, it will kick in for low and high voltage conditions, and bridges those annonying one and two second outages that cause reboots. All in all, it is a real convenience.

And the alarm CAN be controlled. It can be shut off entirely. It can also be set to remain silent when the PC is off or hibernating. It can also be set to remain silent between a given hour and another given hour.

I purchased this unit after reading the reviews here. The unit works very well and is easy to install. One point mentioned in earlier reviews, however, needs to be revisited and clarified.

The on-battery alarm CANNOT be disabled with the software if you are running it on a Mac. The alam CAN be disabled with software if you are running it on a PC.

This means that if you plan to use this unit on a Mac and you really want to disable the annoying alarm that beeps every 30 seconds when the system goes to battery power you have one choice: Install the unit and software on a PC first and disable the alarm through the PC interface. Then install the unit and software on your Mac with the alarm now disabled. If you don't have a PC available to act as a SWITCH like this, then you are out of luck and you will have no way to turn off the ear-splitting alarm.

The ES 500 is a great little backup unit. Easy to use, long battery life (about 25 min. with a desktop PC plugged in; 2 hrs. with a notebook PC plugged into it). It includes full surge protector capabilities, so you won't need to buy another one of those. It also has several outlets which are widely-spaced so you can plug in transformers for your PC speakers, etc. without covering up a traditional outlet. And it protects your phone lines as well.

We use two of these in our retail shop: 1.) On our point-of-sale 'cash register' computer, and 2.) On our network equipment and DSL modem so that the Internet keeps working because our cash register is dependent on the Internet, and power flashes interupt 'net access. We live in a rural electric cooperative area which has a lot of "blinks," especially during thunderstorms and high wind situations.

At home, we also have it hooked up to our network/DSL equipment. (We use laptop PC's at home, so if the power goes out, we can still compute...at least we have some entertainment during an outage!) We also plug our Tivo and DVD recorder into one so that we don't have to reset them after each power outage (the battery will last several hours if that's all you have plugged into it).

BUT, don't think you need to suffer a complete failure for this product to be useful! When you use the included software to view occasional reports from the battery backup, you'll be amazed how many times the backup has to kick in to correct a "dirty power" situation.

If you compute in an area or building with "dirty" power that surges/spikes or "blinks," or simply has brownouts/voltage drops (and you might not even realize these are happening) this box will smooth it all out to the point that you might not even notice. Smooth power will definitely extend your computer's life.

Buy it, plug your old power strips into it, and forget it (unless you want to occasionally review the reports, in which case you need to hook it to your PC through a USB cable and install the included software). In about 3 years, the batteries will have exceeded their life and you'll have to buy another.

Warning: The "Computer running on battery power" beep alarm is LOUD. If you have the ES 500 connected to your PC via USB cord and have their software installed, you can disable the alarm, however. (But you don't have to run the software and have it hooked to a PC cable to enjoy backup battery power.)

As of this writing, the shipping is free (it weighs 14 lbs.), and Amazon has the lowest price anywhere, SO HOW CAN YOU GO WRONG? It could be the best $50 you ever spend...your computer will certainly think so.

It's unfortunate that an earlier review indicated that the unit had a serious flaw -- beeps whenever there is a problem with the incoming power. This person obviously didn't take any time to familiarize himself with the software that controls the UPS. The notification sounds can be completely turned off with the software.

I agree that I was annoyed when the unit made a loud beep in the middle of the night when there was a power problem. Luckily, it was easy to turn this feature off.

Five stars for this product, for sure.

I ordered 3 APC Back-UPS ES 500s on the recommendation of an employee of mine who used to work at APC. I've had them for about a month now without any problems. They've functioned properly through a few unexpected power interruptions. I'll gladly order more if the need arises.

Pros:
- Large plug spacing, good for power adapters
- Simple design
- Long cord

Cons:
- No line conditioning (usually an expensive option)

Just know going in - if your equipment gets fried, they won't pay you a dime. They will blame it on anything from faulty building wiring to bad grounding and deny your claim. Why don't they just print '$500,000,000,000 WARRANTY' on the box - if they don't intend to stand behind their product? I had one computer system that was wireless and it's only link to electricity was through an APC battery. Lightning struck and it died and started to smell burnt. I sent in the claim and the unit & got what looks like their standard protocol - sorry, no replacement. The system was only worth $200 which is far less than our company spends annually on batteries. I won't use APC again.

First of all why do you want a power UPS? There are some very good reasons. (1) You never want your machine to go down incorrectly because of a blackout. (2) You want to work with clean power only. (3) You want to monitor your PC power. (4) You want to prevent your PC from being damaged due to a power problem like a lighting strike and want surge protection. The first rule about UPS is to never trust the insurance claim. Get your PC insured elsewhere. These companies have a tendency not to support their insurance claims. I have a PC running some very high specifications with over six USB devices, LCD monitor, printer and Ethernet equipment, with everything on at the same time. I have never gone above 325W of usage and average between 250W and 300W when managing a high spec game and doing lots of background tasks. Even though I have a 400W Power Supply Unit (PSU) I will be upgrading to a 500W PSU because it is better quality model. The way I can monitor how many Watts I use is with UPS software and hardware. So the question you need to ask is how many watts you will be using. The short answer to this is you don't know until you install the UPS and software that tells you how many watts you use because that appears to be the only way you can monitor your wattage at this time. You need to estimate what it is. I would say a high-end domestic PC (not a server) would use 300W max if it has one of every device you can think off turned on. As soon as we add things like another PC, or several printers, or several monitors, then we can start to overload a 325W UPS. This brings us to the first thing we need to learn about any UPS - Overloading and balancing. The overload feature is a warning system that turns on when you have overloaded the UPS capacity. Overloading does two things. It can in theory eventually damage the UPS and it voids the warranty. Most UPS are 325W but there are 800W - 1000W and even greater models out there for home networks that use more than one PC setup but to be honest you are probably going to get a UPS per PC setup rather than expensive bigger UPS for a network. So check the UPS rating. What UPS you choose depends on how much you want to load on it. Next thing you need to check with the UPS is if it comes with a USB connection. If it does this is a big plus because it means you can control it from your PC and the UPS comes with software. Now if the UPS has this feature then you can do loads of stuff like turning off UPS sound alarms, controlling how your UPS handles a blackout, how long it uses the battery before shutdown or hibernation, if it sounds an alarm or not, if it run self tests, data collection and monitoring, notifications and sensitivity settings. If the UPS does not come with a USB connection and software then you probably should be looking for an UPS designed for computer use rather than a UPS for non-computer equipment. Most UPS have LED indicators that tell you the status of the unit. The next thing to understand is that testing your UPS is not done by breaking it out of the box, connecting it to the mains, plugging your PC in and then turning off the house's power with the circuit breaker. You must charge the UPS first! So read the instructions. Usually you must attach the battery to the UPS (plug it in firmly!) and wait before using it. Then perform the test using the software first! Then you can consider trying to simulate a blackout in your home to see if the PC stays up. Usually a UPS is programmed to shutdown your PC if the blackout lasts for a few seconds. Nearly all UPS models with a USB connection can be customized for the shutdown event or how long the PC should hold for on the UPS battery. Most UPS devices allow you to connect a modem phone line into the device and then run a phone line into your modem. This is important because power surges on a UPS that do not have this protection can damage a PC through the unprotected phone line running into the modem that usually runs to the PC somehow. This is nasty problem with the degree of security that a UPS can provide. If it doesn't have this function then it is not going to provide 100% surge protection with a PC that is on-line. Networking a UPS PC to another PC without UPS can also increase the risk of surge protection problems. It is not recommend that you network a UPS PC to a non-UPS PC unless surge protection and the warranty are not an issue. One last thing is that some UPS have input regions on the UPS for surge protection and other input regions are not surge protected. Also with some models the batteries need to be replaced after a few years if you end up using them a lot. This is everything you need to know about an UPS before you choose one. It is basically now about downloading the technical specs of the UPS and making sure it provides you with what you need. The two top brands are APC and Belkin.

I purchased this unit due to frequent blackouts in my area and 2 power supplies going bad. It will run my cable modem, router, PC, and LCD monitor for 5 minutes. This is more than enough time to save work and shut down. Equally important, I know that my electronics are receiving clean power. I feel that this investment is minor compared to the loss of valuable data or the failure of equipment due to a power spike or an irregular power supply. As always, Amazon had it to me in <2 business days.

Mostly, this is great. You get a reasonably powerful backup system, software control, and even a nice power strip. With its 500VA rating, you'll have plenty of power to ride out a short outage, and plenty of time to safely shut down in a longer outage. It's easy to set up and works great.

OK, here is the key flaw. This unit is advertised as being a great item for home or home-office computers. Problem: Its alarm starts to beep - quite loudly - ANY time the power goes out. I find this really inappropriate for a piece of electronics. My power is reasonably reliable, but like most people, we have occasional outages. In fact, my local utility likes to service the lines in the middle of the night.

Do I really need a loud beeper to wake up the family every time we have a 10 minute outage at 3am?

APC really needs to add a control to deactivate or otherwise control the alarm.

I replaced an older APC uninterruptible power supply with this one. I like the power bar design which makes it easy to use. It includes software to shut down your computer if the backup power gets low, and software so that you can choose not to get an alarm if the power goes out in the middle of the night. It has enough backup power to give my tower and monitor over 20 minutes of power if the wall power goes out. One tip; if you have a spare backup outlet, plug your electronic phone in. That way you won't be disconnected if there's a momentary power outage.