Customer Reviews

Belkin F6B750-AVR 6-Outlet Uninterruptible Power Supply with Broadband Surge Protection (750VA)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I live in an area that has frequent power outages. Just a second or two long, these outages will reset my cable modem, my wireless access point, and my desktop computer. To safeguard these devices from suddenly switching off and on, I bought this UPS.

750VA is a decent amount of stored power for a modern computer, giving you at least 15 minutes to finish up and shut down before your computer shuts itself off and you lose your work. It also means that my internet connection will not shut down during a short outage, and thus the laptops in the house can keep browsing the web and answering e-mail.

If you have an always on cable internet connection, the surge protection for both power and the coaxial will help prevent damage to computer components. I once had a freak surge destroy a broadband modem, my wireless access point, and the network card on my PC. Needless to say, I don't take chances now, because a surge through a phone line/DSL/or coaxial can go a long way through all your interconnected components.

In addition, the plug-ins on the top of the UPS are spaced widely enough to accomodate wide "bricks" being plugged in side by side. Power strips often get clogged by such oversized devices being plugged in, so it was nice of them to think of this and design accordingly.

This is a great piece of the equipment for the price.

I live in the northern plains with we get plenty of power outages. I wanted an UPS system that would be easy to install and allow enough time for my computer to shut down. After some research, I bought the Belkin 750VA UPS W/Broadband and I couldn't be happier.

Pros:
-A fairly small unit. It can fit under a desk nicely.
-Setup was easy. The setup took less the 15 minute. It actually took longer to charge the batteries.
-Software features. Is fairly easy to use and has more advance features such as network access to the UPS.

Cons:
-One problem I had is with the testing portion of the software. The software wouldn't allow me to turn the buzzer off for battery tests.
-Once in a while the UPS software on my computer loses connection to the UPS.

Overall, an excellent product and I am planning on buying a second one.

Belkin UPS products use monitoring and shutdown software called Bulldog Plus. Since the software is at the center of how we interface with the product, this review focusses specifically on the software. To start, the software runs on Mac and PC. It does not run on Linux (which a majority of enterprise clients use). This lack of compatibility may suggest that this product line is consumer-grade rather than industry or enterprise-grade. With compatibility issues out of the way, my review follows:

BULLDOG DOESN'T LET YOU SLEEP

The software doesn't recognize when the computer (my experience is with a Mac) goes to sleep. Should a power outage occur while your system is asleep, Bulldog does not wake your computer and handle things as it would during normal mode: quit applications and shut down safely. Instead, you'll continue to run in sleep mode until the battery runs out. Second, under normal working conditions when you manually wake from sleep, Bulldog automatically launches to tell you that it no longer is monitoring your system. That is, after waking from sleep mode, Bulldog can no longer detect your load levels, nor provide you with other stats as it normally does. In effect, the software fails as soon as the system goes to sleep once. It only works when your computer is first turned on. Any variation from this, and the software is, by design, largely useless to you. If your computer is asleep when a power outage occurs, the UPS will continue to provide power from it's battery, but the Bulldog software will no longer do what you expect from a "protective" product (with no less a protective name). Wouldn't your "bulldog" wake you when something goes awry?

I called Belkin and spoke with a "product manager" for Bulldog. He said his team hadn't figured out how to interface with OS X's sleep function, and so he recommended (if I want continued protection from Bulldog) that I never "sleep" my computer, instead opting to either leave it on or shut it down every time I left it alone. Is that a solution?

POOR IMPLEMENTATION OF PREFERENCES

The application doesn't use a typical preference pane, instead it separates four preference windows which you access from menu bar drop downs. This effectively hides this tool's settings all over the place, making it difficult for us to, for example, stop it from prompting us with alerts every minute (a default feature in one of these window's settings) when we approach the load level. You can see in my TIP below that to make an adjustment, you have to go all over in the menu items to locate and modify related settings. This is the kind of software that illustrates how important it is to follow Apple's GUI guidelines: preferences in one window please!

ALERTS COULD BE MORE USEFUL AND LESS AN ANNOYANCE

To alert you that your system is approaching the battery's total load level, a loud sharp tone comes from Belkin's UPS speaker. This will continue to fire off whenever your load level dips below, then dips up again past that load level. How do you turn it's volume down? (I live in a small apartment - I don't need to hear it from the neighbors, or as it was intended, from the other side of the house...) Well, you cant change the loudness. No setting for that. It's also difficult to figure out how to get it to stop firing off (and waking your girlfriend in the next room: "Hey, what's going on in there?").

MULTIPLE LAUNCHES OF THE SAME APPLICATION

Oddly, though, it may have sprung open multiple versions of the same application, one window behind the other, and changing the settings in one while another duplicate application is launched effectively prevents your changes from being completely recognized. To see this multiple application launch in action, set both your Load Warning Level and your Load Critical Level to 45%. Then toggle on your Enable Notification Messages leaving it's default settings at 60 seconds. Every sixty seconds, each of the two warning dialogs launches a new application. Brilliant.

TIP: FIVE STEPS TO KILL SOME OF YOUR ALARMS AND ALERT WINDOWS:

1. From the menu bar item: System>Event Actions> Deselect the "Enable Notification Messages" radio button.

2. From the menu bar item: System>UPS Property...> Change "Load Warning Level" to 150%.

3. From the menu bar item: System>UPS Property...> Change "Load Critical Level" to 150%.

4. From the menu bar item: Control>UPS Audible Alarm Off> toggle this (it will provide no confirmation).

5. Quit Bulldog.

Launch Bulldog again and confirm that your 1-3 steps took. They WONT take if you had two Bulldog applications launched when you made changes. This ONLY prevents the alarm and alerts from firing off once every minute (you will still get messages if you cross 150%). This does not, however, prevent Bulldog from making noises each time you cross 100%. That's a setting you can't control. If this keeps occurring, consider getting a UPS rated for higher than your current voltage rating.

FAIR WARNING FOR THOSE CONSIDERING ANY UPS

I bought a 750VA UPS from Belkin. This is not enough if you're a professional editor, designer, or coder with a large monitor. I have to keep my 30" monitor's brightness turned down in order not to set off the fire engine tone from the UPS. My system is a G5 Quad (the last of them built, with 2.5GHz per core), with 8 Gigs of RAM. If you're editing video, importing CDs into iTunes or using Aperture or Photoshop, then you probably need a much higher VA UPS. If you're doing mostly email, browsing the web, and own a monitor smaller than 30" (or are using a laptop) then the 750VA may be fine for your needs.

I have only had this for a few weeks but it seems to work well. I had 2 apc backups that went down after a couple of months. A work associate has had the Belkin for a year with no problems. Good value.

Works as it should. I'm not crazy about the software that came with it, but I haven't really felt a need to really get into it; I plug the unit into the wall, I plug the computer and peripherals into the UPS. Everything works. Two weeks later, we lose power during a storm, and it's like nothing happened. The computer whirrs happily along, giving me plenty of time to shut down. The unit beeps during power outages, which can get annoying if you don't want to turn it off, because you've plugged a lamp into it, for instance.

You can't go wrong with Belkin. Even if you live in an area that has few power outages, it is a good thing to have if you have a substantial amount of $ tied up in your computer system.

I purchased the unit in Feb 2008. Was able to experience a couple power outages while on the computer on the same night just after 3 year warranty (May 2011). There was no protection, no warning. The computer quit instantly along with the UPS (no beeping - dead). When power came back on, there was a green light on the UPS showing no fault. Power went out again, the computer had no backup power and quit instantly along with the UPS.

Not much to write about except that it works as advertised.

I had my Sony KDF-E50A10 50" LCD Rear Projection TV along with a Motorola 6200 Cable Box plugged into the Belkin 750VA UPS. I unplugged the Belkin from the wall with the TV and STB still ON and it switched over the the backup supply without a hitch.

This particular Belkin AVR has surge protection on the coax plug in which I wanted since it was going to be used for the expensive TV.

Good deal.

If you want to throw your money away, buy this UPS. If you want to have a UPS that will last, buy another one that has replacement batteries available. Moreover, my battery did not last 3 years, as claimed. I had a recent blackout in which the battery died within 2 minutes. Previously, I had enough time to shut down my computer. This time, I didn't.

I've very galled that Belkin has the nerve to continue to sell this unsupported product.