UPS Products    Rating: 

04/03/03

APC Uninterruptible Power Supplies Get the Job Done

Recently, we reviewed some UPS systems from TrippLite, a manufacturer of power management products.  Today we review similar UPS products from another well known manufacturer of power management products, American Power Conversion (APC).   Headquartered in Rhode Island, APC was founded in 1981 and is a fortune 1000 company. Their products can be found in such stores as Office Depot, Sam's, and CompUSA.

For the uninitiated, a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) takes over during a blackout, powering your equipment by a backup battery. An inexpensive UPS will keep your equipment running long enough for you to save your work and perform an orderly shutdown. More expensive UPS units provide additional capabilities, such as a voltage regulator to protect against brownouts.

Today we review two UPS units from APC that are particularly well suited for home, home office, and small office use: a standby Back-UPS ES 725 Broadband, and for those in need of voltage regulation, the Back-UPS LS 700.

The APC Back-UPS ES725 Broadband UPS

The Back-UPS ES725, pictured below, is an attractive, space saving UPS that can easily fit on or under a desk With a street price of $79, this unit only costs about $40 more than a good surge protector, and you get all of the benefits of a surge protector and a UPS.  APC calls this model a broadband UPS because it provides protection for broadband connections (cable and DSL), sources of power spikes that users often overlook. 

The thing that most sets the Back-UPS ES725 apart from other products in its price range is that it has 8 outlets! Four of the outlets provide both battery backup and surge protection, and the other four provide only surge protection. Most other standby UPS systems in this price range provide only 6 outlets. These extra two outlets are important because the economics of buying a UPS turn especially sour if you also have to buy a surge protector also to handle your extra plugs. In my case, I need all 8 outlets to service two printers, a scanner, the CPU, monitor, speakers, USB hub, and a phone. (In case you are wondering, UPS manufacturers recommend against plugging a power strip into a UPS to increase your number of outlets, as an overload may occur and trip the built-in circuit breaker.)

The second most important feature about the Back-UPS ES725 is that it has two widely spaced outlets, which means that you can plug in two transformers without blocking other outlets. For example, you can plug your USB hub into the battery backup transformer plug and your computer speakers into the other transformer plug.

The Back-UPS ES725 comes with a USB cable to connect the UPS to your computer, and APC PowerChute Personal Edition power management software. Use of the cable and software are entirely optional, but I highly recommend it because it provides valuable information as well as flexibility in configuring your UPS for automatic "graceful" shutdowns. The unit I received contained a CD that included the PowerChute software, but I found and downloaded a more up to date version from APC's web site.

The unit has a six foot power cord and space saving flat plug.  

APC PowerChute Personal Edition Software

The included software installed easily and automatically loads into your computer's startup group.  The user interface tells you at a glance whether you are running on AC or DC power, the percentage charge on your battery, and the estimated battery time. 

PowerChute can be set do an automatic "graceful" save and shutdown either after your equipment as been on battery power for a certain amount of minutes (to conserve battery power), or when there are a certain amount of minutes of battery power remaining (to maximize run time). If you are using Windows XP, the software works in conjunction with the XP hibernation feature.

One of the nicer features of the software is that you can disable the annoying battery backup alarms during the evening or when your power is out:

APC notes that there are compatibility issues between the PowerChute software and Norton AntiVirus corporate edition. 

Testing

APC recommends that you plug your monitor and CPU into two of the battery powered plugs. APC also recommends that, if you have a powered USB hub, you plug it into a battery powered plug as well, or else your downstream peripherals will not function.

In our tests, the UPS unit did what it was supposed to do. That is, it performed a seamless transition to the battery backup when we simulated a power outage. It allowed us plenty of time to manually save our data and shut down our computer, and the automatic "graceful" shutdown also worked without any problems.

With a 20 inch CRT monitor, CPU, and USB hub plugged into the battery powered outlets, the unit powered my system for 11 minutes. The actual battery capacity is about 16 minutes, but when you have PowerChute software installed, it shuts your system down with five minutes of power remaining (you cannot change the setting to any lower than five minutes).

With a 19 inch LCD flat panel display instead of the 20 inch CRT monitor, the ES725 powered my system for a 20 minutes before shutting down because the LCD consumes much less power than the CRT.

Issues

I have but three quibbles with this unit.  The estimated battery time is way off - much higher than it really is. The UPS is supposed to learn over time, but after having simulated several blackouts, my unit still shows an estimated battery time of 60 minutes. However, during discharge, you do get a very accurate assessment of the remaining battery time (displayed as "time until shutdown.")

The second quibble is that APC's PowerChute software can only save previously existing documents during an automatic shutdown, whereas TrippLite's PowerAlert software can also save new documents. However, if your operating system supports hibernation, APC's software will put your system into hibernation mode so that you will not lose any newly created documents.

The third quibble is that the power cord is only 6 feet. A 10 foot cord would be more appropriate, in my opinion.

Determining Whether You Need a UPS With a Voltage Regulator

When I tested the Back-UPS ES725 standby UPS, I noticed a disturbing situation. Whenever I turned on a power hungry device (like a laser printer or office copier) that was on the same circuit as the UPS, the UPS would momentarily switch from AC to DC power. When this happened, PowerChute displayed the following popup window:

When the unit switched back to AC power a moment later, PowerChute displayed this window:

I experienced a similar, although more serious situation, with the TrippLite standby UPS I reviewed recently. With the TrippLite UPS, this situation caused my computer to reboot, resulting in lost data and a decidedly ungraceful shutdown / restart. The Back-UPS ES72 switched over to battery power fast enough to retain power to my PC, and therefore outperformed the TrippLite standby UPS in this regard.

The problem I experienced was not a defect in the UPS unit, but rather indicative of the fact that I have a soft power line. This is a condition where the input voltage drops significantly when the load on the line increases rapidly. A soft power line is, in effect, a brownout and is a common occurrence in houses that are far away from the nearest power company transformer. A good way to test for this in your own house is to turn on a power hungry device. If the lights flicker, you have a soft power line. 

If the voltage drops low enough, the backup battery on a standby UPS kicks in. This is not only annoying - it adds wear and tear on your backup battery.

Fortunately, there is a better solution: a slightly more expensive type of UPS known as a line interactive UPS. Line interactive UPS systems contain a voltage regulator that automatically boosts the voltage during a brownout without resorting to the backup battery. This feature is also referred to as automatic voltage regulation.

The APC Back-UPS LS 700 UPS

APC's Back-UPS LS 700 model (pictured below) has AVR (automatic voltage regulation).

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The Back-UPS LS 700 has a "tower" configuration and is 9.4 x 5 x 7.9 inches. It has seven outlets. Four outlets provide both battery backup and surge protection, and the other three provide only surge protection. Unlike most tower units, where the plugs hang off the side, the plugs mount on the top, which makes it less likely for heavy transformer plugs to fall out. The LS 700 does not have any widely spaced transformer outlets, but you can plug transformer plugs into the two bottom outlets without blocking any other outlets.

This unit also works in conjunction with APC's PowerChute software and comes with a USB cable. At a street price of $107, it costs more than the standby UPS and has one less outlet, but if you need a voltage regulator, it is a good value as most line interactive UPS units in this price range have only six outlets. The unit has a six foot power cord.

Testing

With a 20 inch CRT monitor, CPU, and USB hub plugged into the battery powered outlets, the unit powered my system for 15 minutes before automatic shutdown. With a 19 inch LCD flat panel display instead of a 20 inch CRT monitor, the unit powered my system for a whopping 28 minutes!

The automatic voltage regulator solved my soft power line problem. That is, it prevented the backup battery from kicking in when I turned on a power hungry device. However, it is worth nothing that I had to set the voltage sensitivity to low in order to cause the voltage regulator to kick in. Otherwise, the UPS switched to backup battery when I powered on my laser printer or office copier:

Summary

If you don't have a soft power line, the standby Back-UPS ES725 is a great value at a street price at $79 because it has 8 outlets and provides sufficient backup battery power to allow a graceful shutdown of your system. 

If you need a voltage regulator or more battery backup run time, the Back-UPS LS 700 is a solid value at a street price of $107. It only has 7 outlets, but it can power your computer for up to 40% longer than the Back-UPS ES725.  Furthermore, its voltage regulator will eliminate the frequent switchover to battery backup that occurs with a standby UPS if you have a soft power line.

Both products carry a two year warranty.

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