5SC1500

I've had the Eaton 5SC1500 plugged in for little over a week and it's been smooth sailing ever since. Yes this unit has a higher price tag than a CyberPower UPS but the quality and post-sale support from EATON are worth the price. Also the ABM should in theory have the internal battery last ~5 years. That's longer than any APC or CyberPower unit I have read about. My equipment is pulling roughly 130w of power on average. Roughly speaking that's 11% capacity of this unit with 1 hour of battery capacity if there were an outage. Now from the beginning, this UPS weighs 34lbs so be careful lifting with your back. Make sure to open the front panel to plug in the batteries when you receive the unit. Before you plug in any equipment into the UPS outlets, plug the unit into wall power to let the internal batteries charge for at least 8 hours. The elephant in the room, the loud fan. Yes it's annoying when it's running BUT that's only if the internal battery is charging. Once the battery charge state reaches >96%, the fan shuts off. I have not encountered the fan running with a higher load on the UPS as of yet. There is also a buzz of electricity coming from the front panel that is inaudible from a distance but is present when close to the unit continuously. I'd say the buzz is in the ballpark of ~10-20dB. Speaking with a EATON's technical support rep, which is very quick to respond on the phone, this is normal operation from the unit. Lastly, make sure to size the UPS to be appropriate for your equipment. My equipment will not use more than 30% of this UPS's rated capacity so the fan will never run unless there is an outage and the battery has to recharge. I will update my review should my experience change. Overall, I am a satisfied customer.

It was hard to find info about how the fan operates which I really wanted to know because some people complain about fan noise. In my experience the fan only turns on when recharging the battery after a power outage and when the UPS is drawing from the battery during a power outage. It has not run any other time. Regarding the noise itself, I can definitely hear it when I’m in the same room as my network equipment but to me it’s just low frequency background noise and I have bigger things to worry about when the power goes out anyway. For me the fan noise is a total non issue. GPU fans in general are much more noticeable. The other thing I couldn’t find information about was the display backlighting. I had hoped that I could set to always be on but I wasn’t able to. I like to periodically glance at it to see power usage, it gives me idea if various equipment is properly going into standby etc. But no, you have to push a button to see the display. You even have to push a button to see minutes remaining during a power outage. That’s a little obnoxious. At least keep it on during an outage. I have high hopes for this one. I got tired of various consumer level APC/cyberpower/etc failing with circuit board problems after a few years. This Eaton runs significantly cooler under normal operation so hopefully it does its job for a long time.

Before I couldn't sleep knowing my systems were unprotected. Now I can't sleep because of the constant fan noise. Despite that it works fantastically. I got it because it has excellent support for Network UPS Tools. That takes a bit of setting up but there are guides, and if that's too much Eaton provides their own monitoring software as well. I just wish the rackmount version was cheaper, but this will work fine. Just needed some good earplugs. Future reversions should use a temperature sensor and a duty cycle on the fan. I've heard of people replacing it with a quieter one but I'm not ready to void the warranty just yet. UPDATE: I had a friend who had his die so I gave him my noisy one. I got the 5S1500LCD to replace it and it's very quiet. It works very well even though the packaging and protective Styrofoam came damaged. All my systems are up and running. Not sure why NUT shows it as an Ellipse PRO but I'm not going to complain. It can call itself whatever it wants to as long as it works as intended. UPDATE 2: He had a power outage and it told him he had 30 minutes, but it died after 5 in the middle of a shutdown. He doesn't know if his 30 year old tape drive is dead or not but he's not happy.

Buying a UPS today can be pretty darned confusing. What you want is described in an engineering language that takes a PhD in Decryption to understand. USB connection? Yes. Long running time? Yes. Noisy? Yes. WAIT...read on... The last item was almost a killer for us but that's a story easily fixed with a quality replacement fan. Regardless, the feature that this model has over others is that it's 36V, not 12V or 24V like most other models. If you've ever bought a cordless power tool, you know that 12V just doesn't cut it. Usually, the higher the voltage, the longer run time. For example, our electric self-propelled mower is 80V and easily cuts our quarter acre with two 2Ah 80V batteries. Did I mention it was also self propelled? Try that with a 40V and see how many batteries you go through. So the feature that is usually hidden in most household UPSes is the operating voltage. I'm not sure why since I believe this is a major selling point, but alas, speculation is just that. The other thing I like about this unit is the smart display. It can tell you precisely how long it can stay up with the current load attached. And of course there's the typical battery voltage and current reports also from this same display. It also has *ALL* outlets backed up and surge protected unlike other models which have some backed up and some just surge protected. This means that the architecture of the backup electronics is at least twice as robust in design as other competing models. So, if you don't mind spending about $15 and change out the 60mmx60mmx25mm fan, you can even use this in your home theater [we use it on our 16Tb Synology media server]. Once you get the fan to quiet down, it's a fantastic UPS.

I'm sure this UPS does its job reasonably well, but I cannot have this thing in the room. With a fan like this, it belongs in a server closet. General info says the UPS should be fully charged and stop doing this in 2 days. It's now been 3 days, with under 180 watts (out of 900) on the UPS, and that only at a 30% duty cycle with only 22 watts for most of the day. The battery indicator says fully charged, and the fan is still running full blast even when there's only 12 watts load on the UPS. It's not even in a particularly quiet room. I have traffic noise, neighbors' kids, a mini-fridge in the room, and right now I'm in a meeting with 7 other people and I'm still bothered by the fan. It's putting out a constant 45dB after the fan slowed down into "quiet" mode. When there's a power outage the fan goes on full blast dumping out 55dB and doesn't stop for a long time. For reference a full 4U Supermicro server in a semi-enclosed rack puts out 50dB, so this thing is as loud as having a 4U rackmount server under your desk. It's completely unsuitable for use at home, but also I can't even imagine an office full of these. It would drive the entire team mad. Sadly my girlfriend jumped the shark and has already trashed all the packaging, so I don't imagine I can return it. Here's how bad it is, I'm considering taking the half-grand this cost, and eating it as a total loss to get something else. If you look online you'll find a bunch of complaints about the fan in this thing, as well as people knowingly voiding their warranties and equipment protection guarantees to modify the unit with a quieter fan. I really wish I'd seen all that before buying.

Best UPS I've owned so far. Not as many bells and whistles as APC or CyberPower, but the batteries last a whole lot longer, and the electronics have yet to fail. The only downside is that Eaton, nor Open Source produce control software that is anything like the early APC software that used to graph power and current input and output, power outage events, etc. Of course the APC software has gotten pretty crappy over the years, so it can't do this either.

The Eaton UPS's fan always run. At first I thought it was too loud, but that was because the battery was charging. After a day the fan speed slowed down and it is relatively quiet. The fan running all the time is a good idea: Not cooking your batteries should increase their life. I use this UPS on a Linux system and control it with NUT.

Bought it because the Eaton brand is legit and Cyberpower/APC build quality gives me anxiety. My PC seems happy it’s being fed clean energy. Don’t be like the other guy and do something not recommended by the manufacturer, break the machine and leave a bad review. Make sure you’re researching prior to purchasing a UPS. If you buy something that won’t produce the power your stuff needs, and not meeting the requirements of the PSU, etc. you’re not gonna have a good time. My platinum PSU requires Pure Sine Wave. My computer used somewhere around 500W, max. So naturally I purchased a 1500VA unit. Thanks for reading this nonsense. Have a good day.