Tripp Lite SMART1500LCDXL 1500 VA Smart UPS Back Up 900 W

Pros: Very Clean compact design. Display is very easy to read from a distance of 3 feet at an angle of ~60° from straight on. Has eight well spaced outlets on the back with four being battery backed and all surge protected. 6ft. cord with right angle flat plug. Cons: Software is intrusive and clumsy. The item was drop shipped from the supplier (no outer packaging other than that of the manufacturer. Weighs in at 16LBS. Package took a beating in transit. Overall Review: Not a bad little UPS for the price. I have been a loyal cutomer of APC for several years, but I’m very impressed with TrippLite’s quality and customer support (on other purchasing adventures).

Pros: Low cost unit that is acceptable for backing A/V equipment. Works fine aside from the heat issue below. Cons: Failed after 1 year. Poor design has the batteries placed right next to the inverter transformer with no adequate cooling. Heat from the transformer will eventually cause the battery shells to to crack open and fail. Tripp-Lite provided a warranty replacement without requiring sending the dead unit back which I thought was unusual, I believe they are aware of the issues with this unit. Overall Review: I opened the dead unit to find out about the heat problem with the batteries. Despite what Tripp-Lite says, if you have minimal electronics knowledge you CAN replace the batteries in thes units, simply unscrew the top cover and the 2 batteries can be easily unplugged and replaced. If you get a warranty replacement don’t throw away your dead one, I was able to get my dead back up and working again with new batteries.

Pros: Worked nicely for two years. Cool blue LCD display can be rotated. Ran all I care to power. Cons: Died after two years. Melted battery and escaped battery liquid. Maybe I didn’t leave enough space for ventilation when I put it behind the desk. Somebody on the net seemed to think it was a design flaw though. Replacing batteries resulted in a nasty arc, confirming that the batteries were not the only thing that died.

Pros: Looked Pretty Cons: Poorly Designed, Unreliable, Non-Replacable Batteries Overall Review: I bought this unit in 2014 and had it 2 months when things started to happen, but it was infrequent so I thought I was at fault. In my area of Florida we have frequent brown outs and power drops lasting 15 to 20 seconds. The power drops occur almost weekly and brownouts depend of temperature. I had an APC 550 that I was under powered for my equipment so I bought this unit thinking my new desktop and server would be protected. Wrong. Initially I would question if something was wrong because the unit would be off as well as hardware, but it only happened 2 times so I thought it was my fault. At 7 months it started occasionally beeping and after 8 months the unit wouldn’t even turn on or charge and tripp lite was no help at all as the batteries can’t be replaced. They also couldn’t say it would be covered by any warranty (no repair locations in South Florida) Rather than pay $50+ to send it back to them for service (non replaceable batteries) I decided to write it off as a learning experience. Gave it to an electrician friend who likes to tinker with things like this. A week later he said it was sent to recycling. His thoughts were the unit was designed for minimal use and was sort of designed to fail with the non replaceable battery design and poor workmanship. My work computer has an APC and have had it since my employer sent me to work at home 4 years ago and it still works without any fuss or needing new batteries. Needless to say this was replaced with an APC unit as well.