APC AV H15 Home Theater 1500VA Power Filter and Power Conditioner

by APC

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 21 x 13 x 7.5 inches ; 21.9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 22 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000AHVGA6
• Item model number: H15
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,585 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

10-22-2007 - Brand New Item. Description - APC H15 12-OUTLET H-TYPE POWER CONDITIONER

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

110 of 115 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Peace of mind (and some wholly imaginary benefits as well!), January 2, 2008

By 

El Grande (Fort Wayne, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: APC AV H15 Home Theater 1500VA Power Filter and Power Conditioner (Electronics)

Generally speaking, these "power conditioners" seem to offer something that most people don't really need. The lower-end offerings from the better-known purveyors of overblown surge protectors (Monster Power, Panamax, etc.) don't seem to do much other than offer a nice-looking industrial grade surge protector with various stages of "filtering". This filtering may or may not have any noticeable effect, but you probably would be surprised by the claims made on these products' behalf by consumer reviews. It's up to you to decide whether these benefits are real or the product of cognitive dissonance. MY feelings and experience are to follow.

Other than giving you the peace of mind that you'll probably be protected from all but the most outrageous power surges, I don't see the sense in most of these units that are on the low side of the $500-or-so mark. When you get into the higher price brackets, you start to see one or more of the following features: AC regeneration, battery backup and voltage regulation. AC regenerators take whatever AC wall power comes into the unit, converts it to DC power, and then reconverts it back to "clean" AC power. These units are fabulously heavy and fabulously expensive as well. They are great if you have truly atrocious power in your home (brownouts, voltage spikes, irregular current, etc.), and they look quite impressive on your equipment shelf, but are overkill for all but the most desperate of situations.

Battery backup units work pretty much the same as battery backup units for computers (in addition to the "filtering" and such). If the power fritzes out you'll have a backup for all your equipment's settings, at least those settings that are in non-volatile memory. If this is important to you, go for it.

Last on my list-of-3 is voltage regulation. This is the thing that I was looking for in my web travels, as I had an annoying (but minor) flicker on my screen that was mostly noticeable when watching paused programming from disc-based media. It was also noticeable when watching "letterboxed" movies that weren't paused, as the black bars (and other dark areas in movies) at the top and bottom of the screen would be of an inconsistent black... Wavering from black to dark gray. I wasn't sure what the problem was at first, figuring maybe it was my DVD player. Then I plugged in another DVD player and had the same result, though this result was not repeated when watching paused programming from the VCR or the digital cable DVR box. After moving cables around to see if it was simply a bad input, I found I had the same result regardless of where the units were plugged in (component video and DVI inputs).

Being the expert I am (har har har), I finally concluded that it was not likely that three different DVD players (an HD-DVD player on the DVI input was the third) were all producing faulty signals and there was a problem with my wall voltage (or maybe the TV, but I digress). I wanted a "power conditioner" that included voltage regulation, and didn't cost a thousand dollars.

The sub-$500 units from Monster, for instance, seem to SUGGEST that they include this feature, but if you read their product sheets more closely you'll find that they don't.

Eventually I stumbled upon this APC unit. All the features I wanted and a list price of $400. At first I didn't pay it much mind because, frankly, I wasn't wowed by the appearance of the unit. There is also the "snob factor", of which there is little with something made by APC in the home theater arena. They're known for making fine equipment meant for computer use, but I'd not known that they made anything for home theater use.

My mind was put to ease when I found that the H15 is the basis for a Rotel-branded power conditioner. For those who don't know, Rotel is a well known manufacturer of very high quality audio gear, and their bottom-end power conditioner is basically an APC H15 with a cosmetic makeover (and a higher price tag, one that won't be discounted much). If it's good enough for Rotel, it's good enough for ME. By the way, Rotel's "better" power conditioner is also based on an APC chassis, but it is significantly more expensive.

Eventually I decided that I couldn't afford to be a stickler for styling and I needed to spend the money wisely on the magic inside the box over the eye candy.

So... DID I spend my money wisely?

That's open to debate, but what isn't open to debate is that the aforementioned screen flicker is gone.

There are all manner of wild claims for power conditioners of every price level. According to the manufacturers and the reviewers (pro and consumer), these things will improve your system's soundstage, clear up your video, "clean" your power, protect your expensive gear from damaging power spikes/dips and possibly do your dishes as well. The most likely benefit of a power conditioner is the surge protection part, I thought, but I guess I have to admit that it did fix my video problem. I actually WANTED this unit to not fix the problem, because then I could return it and not have to spend hundreds of dollars. :-) I haven't found any improvement in my sound system, and the picture hasn't been "cleared up" exactly, so all those claims seem to me to be a bit outrageous. It apparently does fix power anomalies, but it won't do anything much more than that.

If you're as easily entertained as I am, you will be fascinated by the unit's display, which can be configured to show the in/out voltage, the frequency on the line, or the draw of all your attached components in amps. The "hey this is COOL" factor goes away after a couple of days, but I do find myself occasionally looking at the display to see how far off the wall voltage is from 120 at any given time.

Last night was the first time the voltage regulation circuit kicked in. Boy, now THAT was an event! I have a space heater in the same room as my home theater (but not on the same outlet), and when I turned the heat up to high for the first time this winter, the H15 clicked and went into "line boost" mode. I was slightly surprised to see that the wall voltage had dipped to 111V and noticed that the lights on the Xmas tree dimmed a little, but there was no apparent change to the sight or sound of the movie I was watching at the time (the line boost had jacked the H15's output voltage to 121). To be fair, I don't remember any visible or audible change when the same heater was plugged in last winter, but at least I now know that the voltage regulation circuit works as advertised.

Another benefit of this unit, or indeed any of its kind, is that it will clean up the backside of your entertainment system. If you're like me you have a lot of cords running to various power strips and such, and now having everything plugged into one place reduced the clutter. Although not mentioned on the manufacturer's site, APC also includes a sticker sheet that you can use to tag your power cords so you can keep them straight (though the inputs on the back of the unit are all labeled, so once they're plugged in you don't need a sticker to tell what's what). Other things found in the box are a few cables and detachable "rack ears" for use in rack systems.

Now a word about pricing. List is $400, but if you look around you'll find it for up to a hundred dollars less (which is what I paid, not from Amazon or associated retailers). That makes it a little more palatable, but it's still a pretty hefty price for what for most will be nothing more than a surge protector. However, if you compare it to what you'll get from Monster, Empower, Panamax (et. al) for the same "street price", you'll find that they simply can't match the APC in bang-for-the-buck. They do look nicer, though... And if you want all the benefits of the electronics of this unit but can't stand the look of it, go get the Rotel unit that is functionally identical but much more handsome. Just ask yourself if the difference between $300 and $500 is really worth it.

Or, if you want to spend LESS money, the APC H10 is available for a street price of only $200. You have to live with less power handling capability (probably less than the max of your wall outlet) and a less informative display, but if neither of those matter to you, you can get into a voltage-regulated power conditioner for two hundred bucks.

BTW, even though this review is included under the model that is silver, you can get black for the same price if you're diligent in your search.

So far it's done exactly what I bought it for, and hopefully I won't have to find out how well it works as a surge protector. The H15 is very well made and has a high quality feel to it, but it just isn't much to look at. Looks are obviously subjective, but in my mind, Monster and others make a nicer LOOKING power center. Five stars for functionality and value, minus one star for aesthetics.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars H15 1500VA Review, January 10, 2007

By 

Keith Bennett (Lakeland, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: APC AV H15 Home Theater 1500VA Power Filter and Power Conditioner (Electronics)

I love the look and quality of this product. I never knew how much the power fluctuated untill I had this installed. I always see it doing the line trim or fixing a voltage sag and I personally believe this extends the life of your equipment. I have not had any major surges where it tripped the breaker on the back yet but it works well otherwise.

The only negative thing I can think about is that you hear an audible clicking sound when it trims or boosts the voltage.. which can get annoying if it does it alot.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great quality, March 23, 2009

By 

Scott Trindl - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: APC AV H15 Home Theater 1500VA Power Filter and Power Conditioner (Electronics)

I have two high end audio video systems so I ordered two of these..one for each. They replaced 15 year old Adcom ACE 515 line enhancers. These APC components are far more sophisticated and capable than the Adcom units.

They not only protect your expensive gear from power surges and spikes,and do that very well, they have the capability of monitoring the incoming voltage and making adjustments to it so that only 120 vac is output into your components. That is something far beyond the capability of the typical surge suppressor.

The AV H15 looks good among high end audio components as well. It's a substantial 23 pounds with a nicely finished faceplate and an adjustable backlit blue lcd readout for setup and monitoring of your power and the functioning of the APC. It comes with a rack mount kit if that is how you have your setup.

It's cheap insurance to protect your gear and it looks good doing it's job.