What’s the deal with these expensive surge protectors? All I see at places like Best Buy and the like start at $50 or more, some running up to $200. You used to be able to pick them up for $5-$10, but I can’t seem to find those any more. Are these just high priced protectors much like the over priced Monster cables or is there something to them?
Here’s what some place says about them
Sounds a bit strange to me. I had an eletric dog fence put in once and the guy who installed it said that he’s only ever replaced a fence once because of lightning. Nor have I ever known any one to have problems, then again some of the people around me have the $100 3’ cables.
Every summer, I have clients whose cable modems get fried through the coax by lightening storms. I recommend a surge protector with coax connectors to support cable modems. They run about $25-$30 at Staples.
A lot of it is just hype to sell overpriced surge protectors. There are legitimate reasons for installing surge protectors, such as protecting expensive hardware from lightning induced surges and other electrical problems. The IEEE has set standards for surge protectors, so that is one way to compare them. The text you quoted pegs my BS meter.
I think places like Monster Cable just figured out that people would pay obscene amounts of money on cabling for their precious equipment, and now more places are capitalizing on that. Does a $5 surge protector work as effectively as a $20 one? I don’t think so (at least this is what my media specialist mother has told me). But is the EMR caused by your fridge going to degrade the quality of your tv unless you buy the $200 oxygen-free copper wiring? Doubtful.
You might be looking at Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)-type power strips. These have batteries and an inverter so they can continue to provide power during a blackout. The ones with bigger batteries are more expensive.
They’re not entirely hooey. I’ve got a Panamax power filter protecting the home theater equipment. It does an excellent job of killing “hash” on the power line. I did a head-to-head test with it and a regular $20 office-type surge supressor, and a kitchen mixer. The surge supressor did nothing against the on-screen static caused by the running mixer, but the Panamax blocked it. The signal source was satellite TV, which ought to be immune to a mixer, as opposed to an off-air TV channel.
The satellite receiver (take the lid off, and it’s really a computer with a hard drive) is also run through a UPS that’s plugged into the Panamax.
I paid something like $150 for the Panamax box, but it’s protecting about <mentally adds it up…egads!> $6,000 worth of equipment.
If you do nothing else, at least plug your satellite receiver, VCR and DVD player into a UPS so they’re immune to power hiccups.
No it’s nothing like that, it’s just a power strip. I do have one for the TV/DVD etc, but that’s about it. But I’ve been thinking about getting a nicer TV and now where ever I look all they have are the power strips for This is the one I was looking at.
I’ll be darned, Edward The Head, it is just a f***ing surge protector! The pic looks like it oughta have a battery, but the specs say nothing of the sort. After searching other sites I see it is, indeed classified solely as a surge protector.
But then I found the answer. Or rather, it dawned on me. It’s a Monster product. These are the guys who charge $50 to $100 (or more) for cables that ought to cost $10 to $20.
Oh, and I love this quote from one of the sites: “Monster doesn’t just stop with surge. The HTFS 500’s sleek, high-tech design and clearly labeled outlets …”
So there you go. You’re paying a several-hundred-dollar premium for high-tech design and clearly labeled outlets. And you thought they might be ripping you off …
More expensive ones will frequently have a higher joule rating. Meaning roughly the amount of extra power in a surge that they can stifle. The rating is right there on the package. If you’re prone to lighning strikes or have extra-sensitive equipment, you may want to pay attention to this figure.
I saw the title “What’s the deal with expensive power strips” and clicked on specifically to wager the OP was looking at Monster power strips. You can buy power strips that cost hundreads of dollars and are worth it, but it probably won’t be Monster brand. Same deal for the $100 3’ cables you mentioned, proabably Monster.
Now they make printer, modem, and USB cables too. Because your printer’s output will just not look right and be cobvered with noise and garbage if you dare use an ordinairy parallel shielded cable
That’s nothing. The university I work for just bought a $1000 surge protector. It’s not for a server room or anything, it’s for one of our professors. It’s IP-addressable. :eek:
If you have a true need for that scale of protection you should be looking into a proper UPS that routes power through its batteries which can soften if not totally soak power spikes. What many people don’t realize is that its not uncommon for the damage to be reparable for less than the cost of such high end protection. I have had many customers call for machines that failed during lightning storms. Only one was a true loss, 1 just needed a Power supply, most of the others needed motherboards, 1 just a hard drive, 1 just a CDROM.
The most confusing thing about this is why the power spikes are not rated in Volts, but Joules? Is this just to make it harder for the common person to understand? - Jinx
It tells you the amount of energy that the surge suppressor must be able to absorb. If you get hit by a 100 kV electrical discharge, it might give you an annoying jolt or turn you into a crispy critter, depending on the energy of the discharge.
We have several of these in our development lab. The allow each outlet to be turned on/off programmatically via SNMP or interactively via a web interface. Very handy when you load a firmware image that hangs the box — you just flip the power yourself instead of having to call someone who’s down at the lab to do it for you.
If you’re looking to spend big bucks on a high-end power strip, you’re probably better off with Whole House Surge Supression.
By definition, a “surge supressor” is supressing voltage surges, which are almost always generated from outside power lines (usually from lightning strikes down the line). It’s much more efficient to clamp these at the service entrance rather than on individual outlets, and it has the benefit of protecting everything in the house. Plus, most of these have indicators to show when the surge supressing element (typically an MOV, has failed. Cheapo surpressors just have an MOV, and after it takes a big hit, it often fails (although it does protector your equipment). The NEXT time, though, it doesn’t help at all, because it’s dead, and you have no way of knowing.
A whole-house supressor won’t necessarily reduce voltage noise produced from in-house sources, but that’s not the job of a surge supressor. Debating the usefulness of that often degenerates into audiophile-type debates similar to the merits of oxygen-free copper, etc.
