APC Smart-UPS 1500VA UPS Battery Backup with Pure Sine Wave Output (SMT1500)

This model is even better than the older family this one has a LCD with important information and has multiple ways to configure as a set of ports (group) that can be programmed to turn on/off remotely (bouncing dvr, firewalls or other unresponsive equipment or to control other devices or even lights) Love apc, APC has build a name since I remember APC was always among the names respected for their expertise and performance, for me they are soo good that I even have bought a few for home, this UPS units are flawless as they detect correct and protect power surges, peaks and drops and they will keep you running for at least 10 minutes (at full capacity 900watts) needless to say a regular computer/monitor with a router and a small inkjet printer will last up to 40 minutes of work (I have worked under a full blackout finishing up work and it did last around the 40-45 minutes I was impressed) I would say that the unit was probably at 18 to 23% load at the time using OEM APC Battery Pack ( I would always advise use of oem apc battery packs as they are build using an advanced technology that not everyone can replicate and under load most batteries will perform poorly after a few months while the APC OEM stay strong up to 5 years of use and abuse I seen other units like SUA1500RM2 and SUA3000 under Heavy Loads this units performed Magnificent, I have seen a sua1500 that was 4 years old loaded with a dell t710 and a r210 servers switch and kvm, it was close to 90% and under a storm it took countless power spikes/drops even a 5 minute power outage, you could see the device working even before you even notice anything abnormal, the servers keep working all night with no issues, Needless to say I am bias when it comes to APC they really know their stuff. I have used other brands - home and enterprise - and most of them fail when they under heavy load and under stress, (power blackout or during storms) my best guess is the engineering behind the circuitry that does the inversion and the simply well made transformer, I have seen units power off with depleted batteries and coming right back up after the power is restored like nothing, other brands fail to do so or simply will require the user to turn them on, or will require expensive attachments to perform somewhat like their Great APC counterparts.

I was intimidated because of the reviews complaining about the fan noise. When I installed the device, the fan indeed was loud. But once the battery was fully charged, the fan has either completely stopped or is going too slow to notice.The other reviews are a few years old, so perhaps APC changed the fan behavior since then.I initially bought a CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD to save money and although it said it was going to last long on the battery, every power outage resulted in an instantaneous crash of my PC. It was utterly useless, perhaps because of the sign wave quality on that CP model. So I replaced it with this APC SMT-1500 and the CyberPower is assigned to my router now, all is good.EDIT: I am quoting this from an excellent review by Neil E. Isenberg"This (APC SMT-1500) Has fan (APC estimates 45dB max) which runs when:- The battery charges- The unit supplies battery power- The temperature hits 104F- The load is over 75% of unit wattage capability (675W+)."If that is true, it would be wise to buy a unit that is larger than you need to avoid the 75% load condition. I have a 5GHz custom built gaming tower/room heater and a 25" LCD monitor and it usually does not provide over 12% normal load on this UPS and has never gotten even close to 75%.

We have two of these for our home office. One of them carries the primary working computer and first alternate, the networking gear, and the phone gear. The other carries the second alternate workstation and its (low-draw) peripherals.We have outages lasting from seconds to hours. The UPS protects the electronics from the short drops and spikes (and has already paid for itself in this regard) and will keep the workstation up for about two hours if we shut down the first alternate early in the outage, otherwise a little over an hour and a quarter.Before we installed these units, we had outages which cost us hours -- even days -- of recovery time and, on one memorable occasion, a hard disk. This time cost (and equipment failure) cost us MORE than the price of the UPS units.Since installing them, we have only had one incident where an unusually long outage caught us out. When Windows went to shut down, there was a pending Windows update which took longer to perform than the time remaining on the UPS. Since then, we make sure our Windows updates are kept up to date so our shutdowns can occur within a reasonable block of time.

My SMT1500 unit makes a buzzing electric sound even when it is completely off and no device is connected to it. This noise is different from noise coming the rear fan unit which is constantly running, no matter what. I have to physically unplug my unit every night to be able to get some sleep. It took me three phone calls to get APC support to send me a replacement unit. When I received the replacement it was a refurbished one with the same problem. I sent it right back to APC. APC even managed to screw up PowerChute, which is their management software. It is bloated, hard to use, and slow. This is the last product, I'll ever buy from APC until they get their act together.