APC by Schneider Electric Smart-UPS SMC SmartConnect - SMC1500IC - Uninterruptible Power Supply 1500VA (Cloud enabled, 8 Outlets IEC-C13), Black

I have two of these protecting a 6ft rack containing telephony, SAN, networking and audio gear. My previous unit installed by the AV company did not survive a minor power spike. I was so happy with my first APC unit, that when the other brand failed, I ordered a second one. Could not be happier. These have survived multiple power spikes and power cuts and work flawlessly.

Initially purchased this beefy UPS to support a gaming rig (from the days when power was everything, heat and the electricity bill be damned!) but have since moved to a much more power efficient modern rig (running at a typical 50W instead of 150W) so the UPS will hold the power on for far longer.We experience several power fluctuations per year, sometimes it's just a flicker, sometimes the power goes off for a few seconds or several minutes. As I now work from home this has become a critical thing to mitigate, just recently while I was working the power went off for just a few seconds, it would have been enough for me to loose my work had the computer lost power, but the UPS sailed through it like a champ, the computer and monitor etc didn't miss a beat, and a minute later I was able to continue working as if nothing had happened.If working from a laptop it would be different of course, unfortunately they don't make laptops with a 27" screen yet and I really need the screen space for my design work! The UPS will also clean up any spikes or troughs that may come through the mains, giving the device power supplies connected to it extended life and better power efficiency.Knocked off one star because it has a nasty habit of making a loud 'donnnng' noise every so often (probably doing a self-test of some kind) after which it will hum for a while (no doubt charging the batteries or something like that) which is a bit disconcerting and annoying, but one gets used to it. Also, while the display goes into sleep mode which is good, there's a bright green LED on the front which is always on, this catches my eye especially in the evening so is quite distracting; I placed a piece of black card over the display area which covers up the green LED too, just annoying as it serves no purpose (I know the unit is on, I don't need an LED permanently on to tell me that - it should turn off when the display sleeps).

This product is good until the warranty expires. Their smart connect service is not free!!!! It does not say this anywhere in the sales literature. You have to pay to use the basic features like getting an email when their is a powercut or upgrading firmware. I find this incredibly dishonest of the company. I would not buy from them again.

Well built, metal casing. Front panel is plastic though. Easy to set up with the web monitoring. Yet to install the usb software. Good information on the lcd. Duration when on battery is quite poor though, 30mins if the consumption is around 250w, which is a low end pc. If connecting multiple devices, would need two or three of these, which would be rather expensive.

No cable included to plug into mains

I've used APC ups devices for years & years. Always good hardware, always let down by poor software.PowerChute has always been clunky and poorly designed, but maybe you could get it to work after a lot of fudging around.So now we have "SmartConnect" cloud based (woo-hoo!) so I had hoped that it would have improved a little.Nah.Still very basic, cludgy and unhelpful.Example - "warning needs firmware update, click here" and you click & it says "Nope". Much digging through poor manuals and eventually you find that you have to do something with the front panel to make it happen. No clues in the web interface AT ALL. As always it DID work, but it was such a struggle and waste of time. Not like their promo video.So all you get is - maybe it will send an email if something important happens - hasn't done so far despite some obvious alerts, but why be picky, it's not as though they promised anything....except they did in very vague terms.Disappointing, because this doesn't even have a smart-slot (yes they really do call it that, bless!) so you can actually monitor it from a proper network management station & send real alerts.so 5* for the hardware, as usual, but 1* for the software, as usual. I guess it's the same leopard with a new marketing dept.

Didn’t come with UK plug in adapter behind the UPS and euro plugs ...

Deployed loads of these over the years. Reliable and Dependable.Be sure to download and install the software to control the shutdown of the connected server/device in event of power loss (otherwise why do you have one)!