What UPS is the right one?

[Anonymous user]

I bought a BX1300LCD. I'm connecting my computer, LCD monitor, external HD, modem, router, speakers and a laser printer to the UPS. I have following questions:
1- I want to know if I have bought the right one, or maybe I can get one with less power. Mt laser printer when connected to the Back-up draws a lot of wattage (the wattage indicator goes over 800W) and the device start beeping, so I connected the printer to the surge only.
2- Does AVR protect only from extremely low voltage like 90 V (as the manual says) or it protects from high voltage, as well.
3- Somebody was complaining about the noisy fan in this device in his review. Does it have a fan? I don't hear anything.

P.S. My last surge protector without APR (from other company) started beeping every time I printed, even though printer was connected to surge only plug-in. I called them, they said it's because I don't have AVR. I think it’s nonsense. What do you think?

[BillP]

Hi,

First off, I'd like to note that APC recommends that a laser printer shouldnt be plugged into the battery back up side. When a laser printer warms up it can draw up to maybe around 1000 watts or more and definitely overload the smaller UPSs. If its a smaller Back UPS, it could also do that while plugged into the surge protection side. It just draws so much power and overloads the entire UPS/surge protector unit. If you do need to plug it in, you might want to get the laser printer its own surge protector on its own outlet or circuit.

The easiest way to see if this is the "right" unit would be to see how much wattage (without the laser printer) the UPS is drawing which the UPS should be able to tell you now via the LCD or Powerchute software. So, what is the unit reporting without the laser printer in the picture? If its like 300 watts then you might be able to look at something smaller, such as a BR900 for instance which tops out at 540 watts. But we also need to have a bit of overhead maybe when you are doing some heavy processing or using all of your items at once. It also depends on how much runtime you want.

The unit does have a fan.

And to answer your last question about no AVR causing an overload on a surge outlet, I'd like to hear the reasoning. AVR adjusts your voltage if its too high or too low coming in to the UPS so I am not sure how that could make a difference..

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

karte wrote:
I bought a BX1300LCD. I'm connecting my computer, LCD monitor, external HD, modem, router, speakers and a laser printer to the UPS. I have following questions:
1- I want to know if I have bought the right one, or maybe I can get one with less power. Mt laser printer when connected to the Back-up draws a lot of wattage (the wattage indicator goes over 800W) and the device start beeping, so I connected the printer to the surge only.
2- Does AVR protect only from extremely low voltage like 90 V (as the manual says) or it protects from high voltage, as well.
3- Somebody was complaining about the noisy fan in this device in his review. Does it have a fan? I don't hear anything.

P.S. My last surge protector without APR (from other company) started beeping every time I printed, even though printer was connected to surge only plug-in. I called them, they said it's because I don't have AVR. I think it’s nonsense. What do you think?

#1: Do you must have the printer usable during an outage? If so, get a really big UPS capable of supporting it or get an inkjet printer that uses far less power.

The tech support jockey you talked to had no idea what they were talking about. Laser printers pull current abruptly and causes a voltage dip, much like how lights dim when you turn on a vacuum. Some UPSs will see this as an abnormality and complain. This depends on the sensitivity which may or may not be adjustable.

The best solution is to put the laser printer on a branch circuit that is not shared by anything sensitive to voltage sags.