Last week I purchased an American Power Conversion (APC) BACK-UPS XS 1300 to keep up with my growing network at home.
The packaging said I could expect approximately 73 minutes of runtime at a load of 79 watts, so I was a little disappointed when I powered up the UPS and learned that my actual runtime would be 50 minutes, nearly 20 minutes (46%) less than advertised.
I decided to let it run for a while and maybe my uptime would increase as the batteries did their thing. No such luck.
Now, I realize calculating run time isn’t an exact science, but my actual run time is 46% less than advertised, so I’m curious if anybody has experience this similar sort of thing. To be fair, I haven’t spoken with APC about it, so perhaps the readings are inaccurate.
Despite the run time issue, I’m so far very happy with the unit. It looks nice, the LCD has a all the info I need at the press of a button, and the USB connector is connected to (and recognized by) my QNAP NAS, which was sort of the impetus for the UPS upgrade in the first place.
In the event of a power failure, the QNAP will automatically power down to avoid any damage to my data.
LCD Readouts Under Present Load
Below are some photos I took of my the XS 1300 BACK-UPS under a 71W load.
What’s Next?
Well, I’ll be adding more equipment in the near future, so I was really hoping for more run time. If this turns out to be more than just an inaccurate reading, the UPS is going back to the store.
Long term, my battery backup strategy is to have to have the critical pieces of my home network (network switches, Internet routers, VoIP services) survive a 2+ hour outage, while secondary devices such as my data storage arrays last for around 30 minutes, before graceful shutdown.