Customer Reviews

CyberPower PR1500LCDRTXL2U Smart App Sinewave Green UPS - 1500VA/1125W AVR LCD SNMP/HTTP XL (Black)

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

 

 

The Chinese made (see photo) "CyberPower PR1500LCDRTXL2U Smart App Sinewave Green UPS - 1500VA/1125W AVR LCD SNMP/HTTP XL (Black)" arrived in a solid, well engineered box (see photo). The gross weight of the box is 42 Kg/92.5 lbs (see photo). On the whole, the unit appears attractive and well made as there were no noticeable blemishes and flaws on the finish and surface of the unit. In short, the product projects the appearance of having been assembled in a factory with well define processes and quality control measures.

On the electrical rating of the unit itself, I find the manufactures claim of 1125 watts of net output power a bit disingenuous. According to the affixed manufacturers electrical label, the device is UL rated to draw 12 Amps at 125 VAC or 1500 VA for a net output of 1125 Watts (see photo) with 75% efficiency. That works out to a total of 1440 VA at the wall plug and 1080 watts for a typical 120 VAC house and only 1320 VA and 990 watts for a house running on 110 VAC. Maybe they exist, but I don't know of any house that is operating at 125 VAC. Hence, presuming normal load and source conditions, it would be more forthright to advertise this device with a maximum output rating of 990-1080 Watts at 110-120 VAC.

The CyberPower PR1500, though called a "UPS" by name, is in fact not a true UPS and uninterrupted. This product, by electrical design, is not a double conversion device and therefore has a transfer time up to 6 milli seconds. A true UPS, with double conversion circuitry (AC-DC-AC) has zero transfer time and truly uninterrupted with AC line lost. But, because of noise levels, electrical efficiency issues and popular perception, CyberPower, APC and other manufactures include devices such as this under the heading of UPS.

The set up and configuration instructions are incomplete and uses very small hard to read type. Also no hard copy of the manual is supplied. The only manual available is one that can be down loaded or obtain from the supplied CDROM. Not all of my power backup applications are near a computer(s) and to presume so or to disregard other applications is a bit near sighted. As for tech support, twice this week I called the phone number listed on the company web site during normal working hours (1:30pm CST) and the phone rang for several minutes with no one answering.

Although not mentioned in the instructions, the front LED display block can be removed and rotated (see photo) to accommodate horizontal and vertical placement. To rotate the LED display block, one has to insert a flat tip (standard) screw driver into a small slot (see photo) and gently and carefully lift and extract the display block. The display block is attached in the rear with a ribbon cable to the face panel so be careful not to extend this part too far. Somewhat disappointing, given today's technology and ease to set, but the displayed input voltage is off by +2 VAC as per a Fluke 187 DVM.

The on/off switch has a plastic protective flip cover (see photo) to prevent accidental cycling of the AC source. This is a nice hardware feature and one that I feel other manufactures would do well to adopt. The unit comes with a 10 foot power cord with the AC prongs set in a protective plastic sheath (see photo). Batteries were fully charged on arrival.

As an observation, during the power cycle/transfer test and yet to be quantified, I noticed that the CyberPower PR1500 produces more inverter, cooling fan noise and vibration than the combined effect produced by an APC SU1400RM2U and SU2200RM2U sine wave units I have protecting an audio system. That's because the inverter fan in the CyberPower PR1500 is not a variable speed fan and operates at full speed at all times the inverter is functioning.

Though minor, at the rear of the unit, the space between the ether cable (line out) and the AC power cord grommet (see photo) is too tight. Even though I have small hands, I still found it necessary to use a flat tip device to depress the plastic ether cable release tab to disconnect the ether cable. This clearance problem could be alleviated if the chassis designers were to rotated the ether ports in their mounts by 180 degrees, placing the ether cable depression release tab opposite to that of the power cord grommet.

Included is a set of rack mount ears (see photo), pseudo dovetail, sliding rail kit (see photo) and shoes/chock (see photo) for freestanding. The steel rails and slides are of the non roller bearing type but still very functional. The two supplied plastic shoes for setting up the UPS in the vertical orientation can be separated (see photo) into four separate chocks for setting up the device in a horizontal non rack mount placement. For a heavy product, not having to be flush with the resting surface can be very helpful such that one can get their fingers underneath the unit for easer lifting.

The CyberPower PR1500 came supplied with a full complement of cables (see photo), two 9 pin serial cables, one USB 2.0 cable, one RJ-11 telephone cable, one RJ-45 CAT5 ether cable along with a CDROM containing the management software.

Last, a three display workstation (23", 24", 22") with an Intel i7 860 CPU, 8GB DDR3, XTC Memory Cooler, Radeon 5850, NEC USB3.0/SATA6 PCIe, AVer HDTV PCIe, 2TB RAID 01, 1.5 TB eSATA HD, Scythe Fan Controller, 3X 120mm fans, 3x 100mm fans, Ultra 600W PS, BT, GB ether hub, speaker bar drawing a total of 304Ws as per the UPS, reports having an estimated run time of 44 minutes with fully charged batteries.

Minus 0.25 for how the UPS output is electrically rated.
Minus 0.25 for high noise level of the AC inverter sub system.
Minus 0.25 for incomplete and too small a print used on the instructions.
Minus 0.25 for not supplying a hard copy of the user manual.

We live in the Santa Cruz mountains and have bad power--sags, spikes, and outages. We have burned up at least ten UPSs (no exaggeration), from various manufacturers (APC, Belkin, TrippLite, etc.), ranging all the way up to 1100 watts, and costing up to $250 per device. Nothing worked. Then we saw very positive reviews for CyberPower, liked the specs (true sine-wave, very long backup times, etc.), and bought two of these units. What a difference! Installation involved plugging them in (no battery to connect--it arrived connected), configuration involved installing the software (which took about 60 seconds), and that was it. We've had lots of rain and wind already this winter, and these UPSs have kept our two big computers, two laptops, router, firewall, switch, wireless, and multiple 1600x1200 flat panels running perfectly. Most amazingly, we had an outage this morning for an hour, and when the power came back on our computers were still running--email was still up, nothing had shut down at all--because there was so much power in reserve. And because we have Amazon Prime, shipping for these heavy beasts was *free*. These may seem expensive, but not nearly as expensive as throwing away a couple thousand dollars worth of burned up UPSs that didn't work.

I run a small rack of servers at home for storage, some shared services (IM, wiki, development tools), and I have a few machines handy for testing. This unit fit into my rack perfectly. It came with rails (not sliders, but, a shelf. I had to use my own mounting screws onto the rack, they weren't included)

As far as power, I have 3 dual socket workstation class machines; with this unit it is projecting 40 minutes of runtime with battery.

It also has a nice feature of the secondary battery group, that allows small blips of power to keep everything running, and longer downtimes to keep the critical stuff still going.

The frontend display has three very important pieces of information; kw usage, capacity, and projected backup time. This is great to see as I was hooking up the unit so I could make sure I wasn't putting too much onto the machine.

I just got it, but, so far, I think its a winner.

High quality unit with web interface and the ability to shutdown two servers out of the box. All at considerably less cost than APC units... Couldn't ask for more. Excellent configuration options/notifications/etc.