Customer Ratings & Reviews

Just purchased this on 22 Feb 2015. Factory test sheet is dated 10/04/2014. After allowing unit to fully charge for 18 hrs and following all the instructions, the unit shows the batteries need to be replaced. Fails self-test, changed the battery date - same problem. Ran self test from the unit as suggested by tech support and it fails. Tech support is sending new unit since they do not have any replacement batteries in stock. Tech support said these batteries only have a 6 month shelf life. Nothing on the box indicates the date of manufacture so you can't tell how old the batteries inside may be. Perhaps they need to indicate that on the box if the shelf life is only 6 months as stated. Additionally, you may want to verify that the serial number printed on the bag label that holds the cables and instructions actually match the serial number on the bottom of the unit or the serial number that shows in the PowerChute software. Mine didn't and I registered it with the wrong serial number. I've used APC products for many years and not had any major problems so I can't say this is a typical experience. Everyone is cutting costs and perhaps these "new" batteries aren't what they should be.

I've had this unit for 2 years, and with power outages typically happening in 2 modes every month, it has been solid in keeping the system up throughout. Mode 1 is the intermittent power dropouts, that happen weekly here in the country. Usually a few seconds or less. The other mode is when we lose power for hours to days, due to storms. The unit shuts the computer system down gracefully after the preset time. I like the display that lets me check the power load on the unit, and the various other parameters like number of events, Voltage, etc. Good unit. I've just ordered 2 more for another couple of units. For the other people that have had defective units, APC should provide 100% recovery on those units, if under warranty, I would think.

I built a new gaming system and gave my wife the old gaming system, I needed another battery backup to protect either the older system for my wife or the newer one for myself, of course I would use the best of what I find to protect the newer system. I have been using the biggest and best Geek sqaud battery backup I could find the last time I purchased one, it is silent and been working for 3 years now, they do not sell these anymore. I bought this one and have been using it on my wife system for two years now, several blackouts now and it has worked perfectly, probably 30+ brownouts as well (most of the time this is when I hear the clicks from this APC not the Geek sqaud unit). I heard a beep a couple months after buying it, seen flashing display and a line through the battery, read up on it, and found that it does a self test that you need to reset it sometimes due to possible false indications. I did that and have not had a problem since.

I have an early-2008 Mac Pro and I recently suffered a power outage while Time Machine was doing a backup to an internal disk, and as a result my backup disk got irreparably corrupted. So my purpose for getting a UPS is to be able to gracefully shutdown in the event of a power outage. APC’s web site made it sound easy... OS-X 10.5+ have built in support for USB UPS’s... it just works! Not quite. It only appears to work until tested further. When I plugged the USB into my Mac I was initially quite impressed that the UPS controls immediately showed up in the Energy Saver preferences. I was a little disappointed that some of the functionality was lacking, such as the remaining run time, but I could live with that since the percentage of batter left seemed accurate. Next I began simulating events by pulling the UPS plug out of the wall. Next issue was the Mac Pro’s power supply buzzed on battery power. This is because these non-Smart UPS’s simulate the AC waveform in low-resolution steps. I didn’t want to pay twice as much for a true since wave, so this was just another annoyance I could live with. However, I’ve read that some newer power supplies don’t work at all with the stepped output, so be sure to do your own research on that. Next I timed a shutdown in the middle of a Time Machine backup to make sure it was graceful. It wasn’t graceful. OS-X does a hard shutdown and my backup disk got irreparably corrupted again. I verified this repeatedly on both Leopard and Snow Leopard. This was upsetting since this was the whole point of the UPS. This isn’t a problem with the UPS, though, so not ready to return it yet, and began researching software alternatives. However, in my repeated testing I find another major issue. OS-X and UPS stop communicating after only a couple events (1-4). Rebooting the computer or unplugging and replugging the USB cable gets it going again. Since most power events would probably result in the computer being restarted anyway, this issue could go unnoticed in practice. However, if folks have brown-outs or outages under a few minutes then this could again defeat one of the main reasons to have a UPS. In trying to determine if this was an Apple problem or an APC problem, I connected the UPS to a Windows XP machine I have and installed the PowerChute software. Verdict: it’s an Apple problem. I simulated over a dozen events on the Windows machine and it kept going like a champ. The PowerChute software also reports all the status information accurately and seems to work really well. For the first time ever I was a bit envious of the PC. But that didn’t last long because I found some better software for the Mac... apcupsd. This is not for the faint of heart as it’s a complicated unix program designed for IT pros. However, there’s a nice binary installation package for OS-X on the www.apcupsd.com website and it works pretty well right out of the box. It has a GUI agent that has all the status info reported by the UPS (a lot more than even PowerChute had). To make modifications to the settings, such as when to shutdown you have to edit a text file as root. This means you have to be familiar with sudo and vi commands. You can also customize what happens on any of a large number of events by editing files with names equal to the event. I modified each one to send mail to my Blackberry. I also made a simple modification to unmount my backup disks when going on battery. I did this, because even though apcupsd does a graceful shutdown command, Time Machine still created some minor corruption. Although the corruption was easily reparable with Disk Utility, I felt this still wasn’t good enough, and Time Machine does seem robust against disk unmounts/ejects in the middle of a backup. I also verified that apcupds never lost communication with UPS over many simulated events and time. And if it did lose communication, there’s an event for that, so it will send me mail, and not just silently ignore the UPS like OS-X. I should mention I also investigated a piece of software called PowerSaveUPS. It’s pretty full-featured and very nice, including 2-level shutdown (graceful, then emergency). However, 1) it’s expensive, and 2) it still had the same communication problem as OS-X. So now I am pretty happy with this UPS since I can do everything I want to do, and don't think there is anything better for the money. And even though the 2 main gripes I had with it seem to be OS-X and Time Machine faults, I’m still deducting stars from APC for claiming Mac compatibility when in reality it was extremely difficult to get it set up to be as reliable and graceful as it ought to be. I think they have a responsibility to put more effort on that. On another note, this UPS has a feature where it will cut power to some sockets based on the current draw of a master socket. The idea is when your computer is asleep it will cut power to peripherals. This sounds nice in theory, and is how they get away with slapping a big sticker on that says it will save you $150/yr in energy costs. However, in practice it doesn't make much sense to plug much in there. I can't plug my monitor there because these sockets are not battery backed, so I wouldn't be able to see to close my files in an outage. I also don't want to put my printer there, because when my office computer is sleeping, we still may want to print over wifi from laptops. In the end, then only thing I found I could put there is my powered speakers. And I don't think that's going to save me anywhere near $150/yr. For your reference, my 8-core Mac Pro with 30” monitor draws 320W at idle, as such this UPS supplies 17 min. of backup power.

Straight forward setup. So far the UPS is doing it's job and I have no complaints. Don't be worried about the low joules rating; this ups protects your components from surges by dissipating the charge as opposed to absorbing it like others. This is preferable, to say the least!

Picked up this after I needed more juice to handle my gaming computer. Very easy to setup and the included software makes tracking usage and settings a breeze. Wish you could turn off the LCD screen, but that's a minor complaint.

I’ve had two of these units now since 2009 when I moved to the mountains which has its ‘fair share’ of periodic power outages throughout the winter. These units have been running strong since ‘day one’ and I’ve never experienced any issues with either of them whatsoever. These systems periodically ‘go through’ their own ‘self-testing’ stage which is completely automatic. Though the manufacture’s warranty is three years, these units have already doubled that particular time frame. BTW, mine stand on end like a computer tower and have an (non-irritating) audible periodic beep whenever they’re in actual use during a power outage. My living room’s television, satellite receiver, and digital phone system run for at least an hour while on battery back-up. Whenever it appears that the power outage will exceed an hour, then I just shut down the television and satellite receiver as to run down the back-up battery completely. One is in my office where I have my high-end gaming computer, my music equipment, my two 27” monitors, my modem/router, and my non-laser printer plugged into it. The other is in my living room where I have my large flat screen television, my surround sound receiver, my Blu-ray player, my digital phone/caller ID system, and my satellite receiver plugged into that one. Since I am also a video game tester and reviewer/writer, I cannot afford to have and of my computers suddenly die midstream….especially when I have nearly completed a map and/or level or a comprehensive review. Since Best Buy has this same exact unit on sale today, I will buy a third unit for my bedroom to use with my large flat screen television, my Blu-ray player, my digital telephone phone, and my satellite receiver. I am tired of waiting for my satellite receivers to reboot whenever the power has been restored after a power outage. It seems like just a waste of valuable time. Besides, I need my home phone available at all times in case of an emergency...cheers.

I have used this UPS for the past month to keep my entire audio/visual system protected from power surges, brown outs, and short power interruptions. One great feature of this UPS is the LCD screen that gives multiple sets of information and most importantly provides the amount of wattage being drawn from the electronics plugged into it. That way, the user knows how much electricity is used from equipment in the standby mode and therefore which things might make sense to plug into the power saving slots. This feature also eliminates any guesswork about how much wattage is used when everything is turned on and how long the battery will last at that load. It works well to protect sensitive electronics beyond computers even though that is how most will use it. It allows me to continue to watch DirecTV when the power goes out and I don't have to wait for the satellite receiver to go through its 5 minute restart after a power interruption.

I previously had a 350VA system, but it proved insufficient to power my Mac Pro along with my monitor and other peripherals. This 1500VA system looked just the ticket. The UPS now runs at 38% of available load, which means I have a very nice 15 minutes if the power goes out. The system is powering: a dual quad-core Mac Pro (with 4 internal hard drives), a Dell 30 inch LCD, a FiOS router/modem and three powered USB hubs, and it has room to spare! The LCD display is great, and shows a bunch of useful information, such as load level, estimated battery run time, etc. It also has a USB cord that works with OS X so that the OS knows when the power has gone out. You can set up the OS to automatically shut down the system when a certain percentage of the battery is remaining (I chose 10%). The UPS has an event counter, so you can keep track of how many times it was tripped. If your setup requires this kind of power, you won't be disappointed.

I purchased this item as a replacement for a Triplite battery backup. I owned APC before but changed to Triplite because I couldn't find a suitable APC when I needed it. I wish I never purchased Triplite. It was a pain almost from day one. The other night I had a power failure and the APC did it's job. The power was out for almost an hour and it kept all my equipment running.

This UPS is a great find for both Linux and Windows fans. Linux users can use the open source apcupsd tools to monitor and control the system. The unit comes with Windows based monitoring tools. It's has plenty of capacity to backup power two pc's with monitors and give plenty of time to complete a task before shutting down the system(s) in the event of a power failure. Have had one power failure since the purchase and the UPS worked flawlessly.

This is my 5th APC UPS product. I have been using them for many years now. I have been very impressed with their quallity and reliability. This BX1500G is no exception. The packaging was secure, the unit was simple to set up and I have had no problems with it since installation. It coped beautifully with a brown-out condition soon after installation.

Never had a problem with any APC i own. This is the 4th one in this style and i have 3 of the smaller ones.

Excellent UPS to support a small home PC with cable modem and router to allow conned devices like tablet and phone wifi to function in short power outages. Can provide PC power for about 30-60 minutes depending on usage and just modem and router for even longer. Replaces a 10 year old APC UPS so you know they are built to last.

A little more expensive than other brands , but consistent quality and performance.

Using this on one of my Linux servers to prevent it from going down during power outages/fluctuations. Works well, displays input and output voltage, time remaining on the battery power percent load, etc. Easy to connect to server and set up the apcupsd daemon. Power goes out, the server is notified and shuts down gracefully, excellent.

Great battery backup. Easy setup. Works great. I currently have 2 of these and looking to buy more! I use them on my server, living room tv, and Internet and network equipment to keep them up and running during power outages.

The product will back up and protect your system and has a great look with nice features and easy setup. However, you will not get the battery run time advertised on the products package. I first bought the 1300G. On the box it stated at ~240 watts you should expect twenty some minutes. (sorry I forgot the exact number for the 1300 but it was around 23 minutes or so) After an easy setup and install of the software I was surprised to see onlu 18 minutes of battery run time. There are two reason I was upset with this result. First my system was only at 187 watts and the APC unit shuts itself off five minutes prior to battery depletion. (you cannot adjust this five minutes any lower) So I only had 13 or less minutes of actual battery time. Considering I was 56 watts less than the box advertisment I should have had closer to 32 minutes of battery time. I decided to exchange the 1300G for the 1500G as its box advertised and additional 24 minutes. After setting up the 1500G I did have more battery run time but it was because the software was showing a lower watt usage of 173 watts. I was now at 30 to 32 minutes and with the five minute cutoff it looked as though I would have between 25 and 27 minutes of actual battery run time. My concern now was whether the software was giving me reliable information. I went to the APC web site and found the compare product site. I chose the 1300 and 1500 and discovered they both used the same battery. How can the same battery produce an addition 24 minutes as their respective box cover states? I also discovered that you can enter how many watts your system is using and the product comparison will tell you how much battery life you have. Remember this figure will not reflect the five minutes not used to shut down the APC before the battery is depleted. But what was revealing is that the APC site shows there is no difference between the 1300 and 1500 units. APC's own web site shows you will not get any more battery life using the 1500G. So what is the difference between the two? Just the number of watts you can load onto the two units, nothing more. As far as battery life there is no difference between the two. So one would have to question why their respective boxes suggests the 1500 will provide 24 minutes more when the APC sites says there is no difference. Despited the"false adverting", in my opinion., the unit does its job just not as advertised when considering battery run time. And since the two units gave me two different watt usage it is difficule to know exacly how much time you do have.

Bought this to protect my computer from sudden shutdowns when the power goes out. Does it’s job well. My computer and printer have lasted longer than usual.

I tested this back-up power supply and it functioned magnificently! I needed something powerful enough to operate (intermittent use for under 30 seconds) a 1/2 HP motor (garage door opener) during a power outage. However, my opener operated a ten (10) foot gate.