APC BACK-UPS RS BR1500LCD 1500VA/865W UPS System
by APC
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List Price: Our Price: $100.00 You Save: $106.99 (52%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of APC BACK-UPS RS BR1500LCD 1500VA/865W UPS System
Customer Review: A nice unit overall.
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me start by saying that this is a very nice UPS. It offers okay runtime, lots of outlets and the LCD display is an outstanding feature. I'm the IT director at a medical facility and have been using APC products for many years, supporting critical servers, network gear and desktops, and have always been pleased with their products.
I bought the BR1500 because my local phone company replaced the copper phone wires to my house with fiber optic cable. One downside of doing that is that the copper wire carried its own low voltage power, which is why a phone that didn't need to be plugged into an outlet would continue to work if you lost power. The fiber optic doesn't do this. To compensate, the interface between the fiber optic connection and your interior phone wiring has a small lead acid batter that they claim will keep the interface running for four to six hours. When we lose power, it's generally for at least 12 hours, and the last time was for two and a half days.
So I ordered the BR1500 and set it up to feed power to the fiber optic interface. The UPS reports that the interface is drawing 15 watts and that it will power it for 258 minutes (4.3 hours). Now I have roughly eight to ten hours of runtime, which is not as much as I was hoping for. What I thought I would do is buy a second battery and have one on the shelf, changing them out every few months so that the one on the shelf has a fairly fresh charge. Then if I lose power and deplete the battery that's currently installed, I could swap it out with the spare.
The documentation that comes with the BR1500 says the unit uses a replacement battery part number APCRBC109. I searched on the APC website for this part number and found nothing. I emailed APC tech support and got a reply that said "I am afraid to say that there is no replacement battery option for BR1500LCD. If the battery needs to be replaced the whole unit needs to be replaced.
Since then, replacement batteries have become available, so this is no longer an issue.
Customer Review: Beware of receiving refurbished units when ordering new.
Summary: 1 Stars
I do not blame Amazon for this but I ordered this APC for the full new price and what I received in the box was an obviously refurbished unit where even the battery had been previously used. There were scuff marks on the cords, the unit, and battery, and all had the look of equipment that has been used for several years. The battery in particular was ridicuously scuffed. The supposed "fresh battery" which should theoretically have very little charge until you charge it for the first time had a full charge once I plugged it in. Keep in mind these batteries are very expensive with a shelf-life of 5 years. A used one will be less of course, and you will have to replace it all the more sooner. There is such a large market on the internet for refurbished APC units, that I find APC's actions suspect in this case. Keep in mind due to the hazardous shipping rules (the acid in the batteries) you will not be able to return the item for a refund. Luckily, Amazon addressed my concerns to my satisfaction, but I cannot guarantee a happy outcome for others who may receive an unwanted refurbished unit. APC has lately had a reputation for terrible customer service. I used to rely on them for stability and reliabilty, but if APC's idea of this is sending used, previously broken, now fixed units, then I think I'll pass from now on.
In short, I wonder how many customers have ordered these, unaware APC is apparently sending refurbished units at the full new price, packaged as new. Before you think I'm strictly criticizing aesthetics, keep in mind the units brand new are only going to last about five years until you will need to change the battery, assuming it will still be sold. More often than not with APC it won't. Your expensive investment becomes shortened even less if you're dealing with used parts. My situation could have been a fluke in regards to receiving a refurbished unit, but then again most people will probabaly not notice tell tale signs of it if they are not looking for it. Consider this before you order.
Customer Review: Strange issues with a Dell Server
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a computer consultant. We always recommend APC SmartUPS products for our clients to use with the servers, but one client balked at the price of those units in the power rating they needed. They have a "white box" clone server and a Dell Power Edge 800, and purchased two of these units, one for each server, because the power in their office had been unreliable. We constantly saw "unexpected shutdown" messages on the Dell server. We switched which unit was on which server, and still saw the issues. Come to find out, while doing a self-test on the unit connected to the Dell server, that during the line power to battery power transition, the Dell would "freak out" and reboot. The software which comes with these units also runs a self-test every two weeks. This means the Dell server would effectively get reset while running every two weeks plus every time there was a power failure. Worse still, the APC software stated that the unit passed the self-tests, and did not report any problems, making it hard to track down.
Extensive discussions with APC support indicated that newer power supplies, especially those which support PFC (Power Factor Correction) might have these types of problems during the switching to battery. They also stated that some power supplies with PFC have issues with the "simulated sine wave" output provided by these BackUPS units. The SmartUPS series uses *TRUE* sine wave output when on battery. Don't go thinking you can just buy a BackUPS with higher VA rating either, as that does not matter at all. The problem occurred even when the Dell server (480W power supply) was the ONLY item connected.
In short, if you need backup power for a modern, name-brand server, all of which use PFC power supplies, you should just save the hassle and properly protect your gear with a SmartUPS unit. That is what this client is going to end up having to do anyway. Good thing they have some phone equipment that really needed a UPS so this BackUPS unit will have some place to go.
Customer Review: Decent Backup UPS. Went back and bought a second
Summary: 4 Stars
What I like about this unit is that it gives me peace of mind. On a Mac Mini with a 23" monitor it'll give you enough power to last over an hour.
The big plus about this unit is that you can put it in a mode where all it's alarms are silenced. So this is great for home use where you'd like to be able to sleep when there's a power failure.
After a few months with it, I decided to buy a 2nd unit for my 2nd Mac Mini. I'm very happy knowing my wife won't complain about beeping noises waking everyone up, and also knowing that our telephone, which works off VOIP on one of the Mac Mini's will work even thru a lengthy power failure.
The only downside of the product is at times figuring out how it works. For example figuring out how to turn one on and off is not always obvious. Do you tap the power button? do you hold it down for several seconds? Do you unplug from AC before hitting power to get it to turn off? After some fiddling you eventually figure out and quickly forget. However, I'm not going to complain because this is a characteristic of almost all UPS products out there.
The unit has settings to alter sensitivity, but I was already having some difficulty figuring out initially how to silence the alarms. You see once you think you disable the alarms you might have to pull the AC cord to verify that you really did disable the alarms. A bit of a pain initially, but once you get everything set right just forget about the unit and know that it'll do it's job and you'll probably never have to touch the unit until either the batteries wear out or you have to move the computer.
The unit comes with software for the Mac, that you can install but I just used the Mac's built in software to work with the UPS. With the UPS hooked up to the Macs USB port, the Mac sort of behaves like it's a laptop showing you the battery status in a little icon on the top right of the screen.
Customer Review: Excellent Product, with one reservation
Summary: 4 Stars
I live in So FL, where the power delivered by FPL suffers from many short duration (1 - 15 second) interruptions. It's not uncommon to have several of these events during the course of a 1 hour rain storm. After two power blips in a period of 15 minutes and waiting through the 2.5 minute reboots and recovering lost data, I finally decided to order the BR1500 LCD. As it turned out, there was another blip WHILE I WAS PLACING THE ORDER WITH AMAZON. Talk about confirming my decision!
I've had the UPS for about 2 months and it's been through dozens of these blips. I would give it 5 stars, except for one thing. I have a dual monitor set-up, with two Samsung 244T's. One of them sails through the blips without a hiccup. About 50% of the time, the other one goes black when the UPS switches from utility power to the backup battery. I have to switch it off and then on again. I suspect that this one monitor is just super sensitive to voltage, and I've had the same thing happen on utility power. My Alienware desktop and all the peripherals go through the blips without a problem.
My system draws about 300 +/-15 watts, which gives me about 15 minutes of running time on the battery; plenty of time to shut things down if I need to. So far, the longest outage while the system has been operating has been only a couple of minutes, so I haven't needed to shut down.
I really like the included software that allows me to monitor the system status, view a log of events and customize the operating parameters. I have the automatic shut down set for 5 minutes, the alarms turned off and the sensitivity set to high. I've left the under and over voltages at their defaults. The box is a little big and heavy, but that's what you get with a product with its capabilities and I don't really notice it tucked under the desk.
Bottom line: I'm very happy with the BR1500LCD.