Customer Reviews

Cyberpower CP1500AVRLCD UPS - LCD Display 1500VA/900W AVR 8-Outlet RJ11/RJ45/Coax Tower USB

5 star:		(157)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I work as a network technician and have used APC equipment for many years. Their high-end units have always done well for us. For many years, I also used their Smart-UPS brand for my home network needs. As they've become old and had problems, it became more economical to replace them, instead of fixing them, especially, since for my desktops, the industry was moving to USB for signaling, and away from serial ports. My rack still has older 1400 VA SU units using SNMP management cards, but I needed a new desktop solution.

For the past three years, I stuck to APC's consumer products and have been very disappointed. They have more problems than the older units I've grown to love, and because they change models so often, it's harder to find a battery replacement. Plus, they just have a sort of cheapness about them.

With my latest computer purchase, a dual quad Mac Pro, my older 800VA APC just couldn't handle it. So, I decided to try this Cyberpower 1500 and have been very pleased with it, using it for about 2 months so far. The signaling and reported time is more reliable than the APC I was using. Although it should be said, any consumer UPS will not guarantee exact runtimes, load measurements, etc. - For what you are paying for this amount of capacity, some sacrifice must be realized. If you do your calculations correctly, and use it as needed (surges, brown-outs and limited black-outs), these units will fulfill your needs. If you need super accurate measurements and reliable AC power generation, then you should consider a high end unit, such as what APC offers for data centers.

The load reading for this unit, when measured with a Kill-A-Watt is pretty accurate. I like the soft blue lighting with auto-off. I connect my two, 24" LCDs to the APC 800VA unit, and the Cyberpower handles the Mac Pro with three, external FireWire drives with no problems. Testing it, by turning off the circuit breaker (shouldn't pull the cord from the wall), reports about 20 minutes of runtime, which seems about right. I've left it on battery power for about 10 minutes, and the readings remained fairly constant. I live out in the country at the end of our power grid, so I get a lot of "dirty" power. Brown-outs are common, and my larger UPS units have the ability to generate statistical logs each day of the power fluctuation. I feel pretty safe with this unit, and wouldn't hesitate to purchase another one.

Lastly, the software both Cyberpower and APC provides for the Mac OS, is really bad! I prefer to just use the Mac's SysPrefs to configure the UPS settings and leave it at that. Both companies desperately need a re-write of their OS X software.

I've had this device for ~3 months and during that period the power has gone out twice for many hours and has "blinked" 5 or 6 times. Half the outlets in the back of the unit provide battery power and surge protection and the other half are just surge protection. I have my Dell XPS710 PC, 20" LCD, and two external USB drives connected to the battery power and my router, modem, speakers and printer connected to the surge protected outlets. It kept my machine running for over 25 mins. when the power went out. My XPS710 is a big gaming rig, so that is just fine. All I need is enough time to finish whatever I'm doing and shut down properly. My PC ran without a hiccup. Same with the power "blinks." They do not affect my PC at all. Plus, it keeps track of all the outages. For a lesser PC, this unit would probably sustain power for much longer. I highly recommend it for protecting any important equipment.

Also, the software will automatically shut down your PC at a pre-set time (i.e., 5 mins of battery power left) in case you lose power when you are not home. Don't forget to download the latest version of the PowerPanel software at the CyberPower website.

I want to start by saying that I love the little LCD display with the ability to see how many watts I'm using and the remaining battery time (both without needing to install any software).

However,

1) Both the box and their website say typical runtime up to 170 minutes. I don't want to call it False Advertising, but it's certainly misleading. I've now plugged in two of these units and, after fully charged, the highest remaining battery time is 100 minutes. That's with nothing plugged in so it could never be greater than 100 minutes.

In my case, I have a Dell Dimension 8250 and an LG 24" LCD (turned down to 4% brightness which significantly reduces power consumption). My system uses 144 watts and I get 39 minutes of backup time. That's better than I got with my previous, similarly priced APC model. However, 144 watts is like two light bulbs and it's sad that the modern state of personal UPSes can only power two light bulbs for 39 minutes, and I paid $170 for this.

2) There's no way to completely silence the alarms. First, if the unit's battery is completely drained, you have to remember to manually silence the alarms again when you turn it back on (unless you install their software). Second, even after you do this, the alarms will still sound during the last fifteen to twenty minutes of battery life. As far as I can tell there's NO WAY to prevent this, not on the UPS and not with the software. You can silence the initial alarms, but not the final ones.

My request to all UPS manufacturers: consider the people who buy UPSes that cost less than $200 -- mainly home users and possibly small businesses. These UPSes are not located in a corporate data center, these are in homes where people sleep. The last thing I care about in the middle of the night is if the power goes out. I certainly don't want my UPS to wake up the whole family.

Please give us an easy way to permanently silence all alarms, without needing to install any software, and that continue to remain always silent, no matter what. Even a DIP switch would be great.

3) I wouldn't count on using the telephone/coax surge-suppressing jacks on this unit. Maybe they'll work for you, maybe not. I couldn't use the telephone jack because it created a lot of noise on the phone line (FWIW I don't have DSL either).

I also couldn't use the coax jack. Actually I was using it for several days in the beginning, but then a couple of techs from Comcast Cable showed up at my door and said they'd traced signal noise in my neighborhood to my house. They insisted that I remove the coax from this UPS. (FWIW they said this wouldn't matter because Comcast supposedly has surge protection outside of people's houses.)

Despite my mixed feelings about this UPS, I would probably recommend and purchase this model again in the future because I haven't been able to find anything better in the market in this price range. It's the lesser of the evils. I've had too many problems with APC models, so I hope to avoid APC while their quality remains inferior.

I purchased this unit in October, and my power only went out once since. Suddenly, in May, everything that was plugged into the device (my PC and monitor) turned off, and the UPS emitted a long beeping sound. I called tech support, and was told that my battery most likely died. I was sent two replacement batteries roughly a week and a half later. I installed the two batteries, but to my dismay, the device still did not work. I contacted tech support, and was told I would have to pay to ship the unit back to them, they would fix it, and mail it back to me (as stated in their terms of warranty). Needless to say, the unit is quite heavy and is somewhat costly to ship. When I asked what assurance they could give me that the device would not fail in another 7 months (forcing me to pay for shipping yet again), I was told that if that happens, they would mail me a new one. I asked why they could not mail me a new one now as I have already been weeks without the UPS, I was told in a snarky tone by an uninformed tech support lackey named "Jeff" it's not "how they do things".

Anyway, I will be buying a better UPS than this. It is a shame that a company which I have heard so many good things about would sell defective devices, and pass the cost on to you.

UPDATE: 7/7/2010:
For kicks, I sent my UPS in, and within a few weeks they sent me a "new" unit. The unit I was sent was actually the same one (I checked the model numbers before I mailed it out), and it still did not work. Every time I plugged anything to it (even a small lamp) it did not power the device from an outlet. It used the battery, and emitted one long solid beep. Needless to say, I was irate, and complained to their tech support. This time they sent me a label to mail the unit to them and assured me a new unit would be sent out. It's been about 3 weeks and I still have not received any word from them about the status of the unit I mailed to them nor when a new unit would be mailed to me.

UPDATE 7/21/2010:
The unit finally arrived, it is new, and finally works. It took me threatening to report them to the better business bureau, but they finally honored their own warranty.

Lots of power and big battery for the price. But:
At setup I noticed the display of time remaining was about 91 min. with no load connected. With a very modest load (46W for a DSL modem, Router and new 20" iMac) it showed about 70 min. This was way less than the advertised 170 min. I called CyberPower tech support and got a lot of "I don't know" and was told I would never see numbers as high as 170 min. So I put it to the test. After the first 60 min. "time remaining" droped only 10 min. The "time remaining" display is not linear. The second 60 min. showed a 35 min. drop. Sometime in the third hour it ran out of battery.
I believe the advertised values are a little optimistic but it should be close to the advertised value. I'll bet the chips in the box were calibrated for a smaller unit with less battery so they show low numbers. I wish tech support would have not tried to obscure the display issue.

I bought this unit on 4/3/2010 and it had problems from the very beginning. Would not turn on with out holding down the display button.
I submitted a support ticket and a claim on 5/23 and initially was contacted by a support tech. His first response was some canned email that was way off the mark. When I ask him to respond to all the information in my inquiry he said that the unit was indeed defective and he would get the claim process moving along for me. The unit doesn't stay on when you remove power then to boot it back up you have to hold down the display button for a good 60seconds. It also fried one of my flat panel monitors. So no one ever got back to me and I have left voice mails and sent three follow up emails. No one is calling me back no one is returning my emails.

Very disappointed in this company.

Got this UPS for 2 different computers. My wifes computer is an older Dell running Windows XP and I have a new Dell Studio XPS 435T running Vista x64. Plugged in both computers and both monitors and loaded the software that came with the unit. I ran a "self test" and my computer re-booted, my wifes computer ran just fine. Ok, switched plugs and same thing happened, I unplugged the UPS and same thing happeded, my computer re-booted and the older XP ran just fine.

Emailed Cyberpower about this and they did get right back to me with this response,

"The power supply in the XPS 435T has good and bad attributes. The good news is the power supply is extremely energy efficient and uses a PFC power supply design. The bad news is that PFC power supply designs will not accept the type of power supplied by a traditional UPS. In order to support the XPS 435T with a UPS you need a UPS that supplies power with a true sine wave form. Any of our Smart Application Series UPS would work"

Ok, so it's my bad that I didn't know I needed a "true sine wave form" UPS for my new computer, but some where, somehow, someone should have warned people about this little issue.

Other than that little issue, it works great on my wifes computer.

I have couple APC made BR1500 UPS. I even purchased addational battery packs to have them last longer time during power failure. We recently had some power failures, however, every time the BR1500 just had a long beep and cut off the AC output. BR1500 overload light kept on. I suspected the one we have gone bad, so I brought another new one from Amazon, that one doing the eaxct the same: If I had the phone system and the name server in it, it would say overload, during unplug the AC input test.

After reading so many good reviews of this UPS. I decided to give this one a try. What a difference! This UPS reported both phone system and name server combined power is 135W. I tried plug into AC and unplug from AC many times, it works flawlessly. Its LCD display also reported to me with internal battery, it will be able to run both phone system and name server for 45 minutes. I am really happy about this UPS.

I think it is a shame APC UPS rated 1500AV can not handle 135W load. I also think anyone serious about their UPS system should give this brand a look and test. The only drawback of this unit is that it does not support external battery packs to extend the battery run time.

I bought this to take the place of an overburdened APC unit. I liked the APC unit but needed something bigger to handle our PCs. Everything APC had was more than I wanted to spend. A friend of mine convinced me to go with this after he bought two of them. While I would have liked to see it a little cheaper it was still better than what APC wanted. I like the LCD panel and the information displayed on it. Even better is the way the LCD goes into "screensaver" mode after a few seconds. That was thoughtful of CyperPower. I only have two minor complaints. First, I would like a few more outlets. Second, I would like the outlets spaced out a little more to accommodate the blocky power cords I have rather than buying adapters for them. It's no big deal, but a nice suggestion.

I would like to put out a "buyers beware" for anyone thinking about purchasing a surge protector/battery backup system. CyberPower a company out of Shakopee MN does not stand behind their replacement guarantee. We had purchased 2 of their battery/surge protector units. During an electrical storm one of them was hit. I heard it and it made a beep sound after. My computer, DSL server asnd monitor hhad to be replaced. I sent the old unit in to Cyberpower and they told me there was nothing wrong with it. That is a impossible. The computer tech validated what happened. When I phoned CyberPower the customer service rep did not even look up my name in the system or anything. I would strongly advise anyone who wants peace of mind using their protectors NOT to purchase one from this company.