CyberPower UPS? Reasonably decent or junk?
 

I'm looking for some feedback on CyberPower brand of UPS'es. Specifically, one of the lower models - CP550SL/AE550. Currently on sale for $45. All the capacity I need (not powering a monitor).

I was all set to go out and buy an APC model, then BestBuy put the CyberPowers on sale this week. I did some searches here and see that 2 or 3 people have had some problems with this brand. I'm trying to determine as best as possible if these were isolated insidents or the brand is junk. I've had other top-dollar brand names crap out on me so it might be hasty to judge on only a small number of reports. On the other hand, I hate buying trash that bites you in the end.

Any reports? Good, bad, so-so?

Those cheap UPS are not true UPS devices because they are stand-by types. I suggest in-line UPS because they provide an always protection setup. This is because in-line UPS draws all the power from a battery, so if there is brown surge or a black out, it always provides power. A stand-by UPS waits until the voltage dips down or there is no AC power and then it eventually switches over to the battery.

A UPS should not substitute a surge protector.

I've always had a high regard for Tripp Lite products and I've used them for twenty years. I recently tried an APC UPS. I'm very unhappy that I did. I'm going to replace it with a Tripp Lite UPS. I believe, but am not sure, that the Tripp Lite UPS that I'm considering is an in line model as Electro spoke of. I can say for certain that the APC UPS that I got provides square wave output but the Tripp Lite model that I expect to order provides sine wave output. That just seems a lot better to me.

Thanks for the feedback. For one, I am specifically looking for a cheaper UPS. Not a piece of trash, but not something that costs $200+ either. The cost of an inline model is more than my needs justify. I have a non-critical home system that I just want to be shutdown gracefully upon power failure. Such failures are rare around here. And I have very good backups scattered across various computers and harddisk as well as DVD and CD backups. So I wouldn't lose anything but time if I had to restore a totally destroyed system (assuming software destruction, not hardware destruction). My time is worth money, but not a whole lot! I will knowingly choose to save $150 in cash in exchange for an hour or two of my leisure time.

So, what I'm really asking is: Given I'm chosing a cheaper standby supply in the first place, is CyberPower vs. APC vs. TrippLite a big difference? I'm not terribly concerned about software either - just the hardware. I can't imagine my needs justify more than $75 to $80 expenditure. Probably far less.

i have a cyberpower 320, it's worthless as a battery backup for anything larger than a clock radio. they claim 10-15 minutes for the average pc. pah.

We have cheap APC UPS all over the office. APC makes a lot of very good ones
but their sub $100.00 units are really annoying. The batteries fail after
a few months and then the units beep solid, as if they were in overload but
they are not. Its the batteries that no longer take a charge.
The more expensive UPS have larger batteries, that are of better quality
and can be expected to last 2 years or more.

Its my opinion that in-line is not necessarily better. I can't think of
a reason why missing 2 or 3 AC cycles is bad while the UPS switches from
line to battery power. If the machine stays up then there's no problem.
Computer power supplies are designed to keep supplying power during
short brownouts, and as long as the UPS switches over there shouldn't
be a problem.

I use the Cyber Power UP1200 (1200VA), its only $119.99 from Newegg.
Works great and they have Linux shutdown software available. Actually
I wrote my own "powerd" software to work with it, but their supplied
Linux software works just fine too and has more monitoring feaatures.

I wouldn't buy anything cheaper than that, really, not even for
my alarm clock.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Since I live pretty close to a Best Buy, I went out and picked up one of the Cyberpowers, as a fallback, while they were on sale. I'm now sitting on it, unopened, to see what else may go on sale over the next few weeks. Best Buy has a 30 day return policy and I'll take advantage of that if something better pops up for a good price in the weekly ads. Some flavor of UPS always seems to be on sale/rebate somewhere. I'm in no great hurry to open the Cyberpower box, so it's easily returnable.

Here is a related question. I have 4 small servers that are rack mounted. I want to put a modest UPS on them. I don't need a long runtime on battery, mainly just enough to let the servers power down cleanly. (The building router isn't on UPS, so connectivity will be lost by a power failure anyway).

Would anyone have any recommendations about a UPS that can signal multiple servers when the power fails? Would I be better off putting each server on its own UPS?