Belkin F6C550-AVR 550VA Battery Backup with Surge Protection

by Belkin

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 15.5 x 7.5 x 12 inches ; 15 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 16 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0001WV08S
• Item model number: F6C550-AVR
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,286 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 26, 2008

Product Description

The 550VA Office Series UPS offers protection for your computer against blackouts and brownouts. It features 4 battery backup outlets with surge protection and 2 surge only outlets. The 550VA Office Series UPS supports USB connectivity. With a capacity of 330 watts this unit is geared towards entrylevel computers and home electronics. The Home Series also features easy to replace batteries for extended product life. Primary InformationPower Device Type :  UPS Power Device / Form Factor :  External PowerPower Provided :  550 VA Surge Suppression :  Standard BatteryBattery Type :  UPS battery ConnectionInterfaces & Connections :  1 x USB Input Connector(s) :  1 x power Output Connector(s) :  6 x power Service&SupportService & Support Type :  3 years warranty UNSPSC CodeUNSPSC Code :  39121011 

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for my application, January 18, 2006

By 

Daniel H. Hamilton "danham" (Harwich, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Belkin F6C550-AVR 550VA Battery Backup with Surge Protection (Electronics)

Before buying any UPS, do some homework. It's not as simple as reading the watts sticker on your computer. Get to know what volt-amps means and decide if you need lots of battery run time or not. I believe many people end up buying too much UPS capacity (which is fine if you can afford it) because mfgrs' "wizards" are not very accurate. This unit, with its fairly low rating, is fine for my needs:

My requirements are to protect my equipment from surges and sags, to give me enough time to save and shut down when the power fails, and to run my DSL modem and WiFi base station for a few hours off and on during an extended outage (we get hurricanes on Cape Cod). I do not need server-class UPS backup, meaning automated shutdown and lengthy run time.

This unit works great for all of the above. It would not run my iMac G4 for very long beyond an emergency shutdown, but that's fine in my case.

The supplied (and downloadable new versions) of Bulldog software are terrible, however. I did not downgrade the unit's star rating for that because you don't need it.

On my Mac, Bulldog only served to display annoying false warnings and would lose connection with the UPS whenever the computer sleeps. Don't even bother installing it.

66 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK, but not great, August 31, 2006

By 

Jon T. Swanson (Missouri) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Belkin F6C550-AVR 550VA Battery Backup with Surge Protection (Electronics)

I've had mixed success with this UPS. If I unplug the UPS from

the wall, it switches to battery back-up just fine. However,

there have been several cases when the power flashed off for

a fraction of a second during a storm and the UPS went into

overload, the computer immediately shut down and I lost all

my work. I bought it to handle that latter situation and so it

has not been very useful to me. I e-mailed Belkin tech support

about this and they... well they never responded.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A tale of two UPS's, February 7, 2008

By 

Patrick (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Belkin F6C550-AVR 550VA Battery Backup with Surge Protection (Electronics)

I just returned my Belkin F6C550-AVR. I liked the form factor (tall with plugs on top) and the price/feature tradeoff looked great. I bought it and followed all the directions to a tee. But there was more to the story:

1) Smell - the chemical smell this thing gives off when charging is noxious. It gave me a headache. I'm not exaggerating.

2) Wasteful - Even when nothing is plugged into it and it's fully charged, it draws 18 watts, as measured by my Kill-A-Watt. That's like leaving a CFL lightbulb on 24/7.

3) Software - The software installs under the name "Automatic Power Management Software". The Belkin website calls it "Bulldog v2" I call it "Bulls#!t". It was apparently written in China by people who know nothing of common UI idioms. It eats up too much space on disk. It is buggy. For example, the "load" was shown as 22%, which made me think it was sized with plenty of headroom. Then I unplugged it to test it, and the load reading jumped up to 43%. Oops. Furthermore, it does not tell you the really useful info: how many minutes remain, what's the current charge level of the battery, What's the current input voltage, etc. What's worse is that it has an administrator password, which gives you access to change things, but the login didn't work! It would accept my blank password (as per the manual) but then would immediate revert back to "read only" mode. So many of the features were not accessible. And did I mention the UI sucked?

So what did I do? Like a good engineer, I researched the alternatives and bought the CyberPower CP850AVRLCD. A little more expensive but *much* more usable, and higher capacity too. It only draws 7 watts when turned off, it doesn't stink up the room, it has a beautiful LCD screen which gives you status, and the software actually works. Plus it gives you status on the useful info, so you actually will know the thing is wearing out before you have your next outage.

To be fair, some people might like the Belkin unit. The mechanical design isn't bad and the price is right. And the software, while half-baked, attempts to include enterprise functions which would be great if you could get them to work. In short, if you plan to use it in the garage or server closet where the smell doesn't matter, you don't mind fighting with the software, you don't care to know the status of the unit, and you're OK with wasting 18 watts constantly, then this could work. Otherwise, I'd look at CyberPower, APC, and Tripp-Lite. Good luck.