Ultra Products 1200 Watt Uninterruptible Power Supply

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

I’ve been using the Ultra 2000VA 1200W backup UPS w/AVR now for nearly one month and it’s lived through the storms in St. Louis that managed to knock out the power out to 500,000 people with great success. After using this product for a month now without a single issue I can’t say anything bad about it. That was until I started this review and a product that I held in a positive light soon made me questioning the marketing of it. Only cord was pulled and the Ultra Products UPS kicked into gear is when I started to notice that everything wasn’t working like it was rated to do. Don’t get me wrong here the UPS kicked in and saved the day just like it was supposed to, but just not for how long it was meant to.

When a company says their product does something I walk away with the impression that it does that. Ultra placed the text “80-90 minutes of back-up time” on the outside of the box and that is what consumers read when they go to purchase one at a retail store. Our testing showed that under a 15-16% load, which is nothing, this model only lasted 35 minutes and 20 seconds. This means that we had less than half of the back-up time than the retail box claimed that just doesn’t sit well with me.

When I was looking around the Ultra Products website I noted that on the 2000VA product page this power supply has a backup time rating of “about 65 minutes“. So, I’m left asking myself which is it?

Then we have the recharge time! The box and website both say reach a battery level of 90% it should take six hours. Our testing showed that it took over 15 hours to recharge the battery, which is 2.5 times longer than the rating that Ultra gave it.

Overall I’m happy with the Ultra Products 200VA. It works and has survived Missouri power outages and brown outs making sure my system avoided failure. The bundled software shutdown the computer in 5 minutes and all was well. Only when disabling the Windows shutdown feature did we have any gripes. From our testing the unit works flawlessly when run with the UPSMON software, but we don’t agree with the specifications on the box. Our test system lasted 35 minutes on the battery and took over 15 hours for the battery to reach 90% capacity. Our findings showed the unit lasted half the advertised time and took 2.5 times longer to charge than the box claimed.

Legit Bottom Line: Everyone needs a UPS and the Ultra Products 2000VA got the job done, just didn’t last as long as long as it’s being marketed to.