Fortunately, most of us will never need to find out how well our surge protectors actually work. Instead, we must put our faith in the warranty offered and the connected equipment insurance provided. However, I can't tell you how many times I have read horror stories in reviews about how APC, or Tripp-Lite, or some other company has stiffed their customer by refusing to pay, once they've examined the equipment. Far too often, the bitter review left behind even explains WHY the customer didn't get their money. As an example, I can recall one such review for this very surge protector in which the customer admitted that, although their cable box was plugged into the surge protector, the cable connection itself was not. That's a bit like blaming your seatbelt for failing to protect you when driving drunk. This is certainly not the highest rated surge protector, but it does have all of the connections necessary to provide protection for your equipment, if connected properly. In addition to 11 power outlets, there's a connection for coax cable, one for your phone line and one for your computer network. In order for these to be effective, however, they need to be used. It's not enough to plug in every single component in your entertainment system to this device if the your cable isn't plugged into this device before connecting to your cable box, if your phone line doesn't pass through this device before connecting to your fax machine, and if your home network doesn't pass through here on the way to your router. A lightening strike can enter on any set of wires entering your home - not just on the power line - and once it enters through a single piece of equipment, from there it can spread to every other connected piece of equipment, frying the electronics in all of them. I noted that one of the ratings made note of a loss of cable signal using this surge protector. I'm using mine on an unamplified indoor antenna without any degradation of signal. It's possible that your own cable company may be the issue, as some of them rely on two-way communication with the cable box, which may not work well with ANY surge protector. I've seen complaints with other surge protectors that ethernet performance may be slowed down as well, but few of us have broadband connections that are fast enough where this would matter anyway. Unfortunately APC and Tripp-Lite do not publish this information, making it very difficult to know if a particular surge protector will work in a particular setting. In my experience, this surge protector works perfectly well with Verizon FiOS. There are a couple of other things I would like to bring up for those trying to decide on the purchase of this particular surge protector. Home networks can be quite extensive and a TV in the bedroom can easily serve as the entry point for a surge that effects your connected refrigerator. Long runs of wire can serve as an antenna, picking up a nearby lightening strike and sending it through your home network. The bottom line is that you need surge protection for every piece of connected equipment. Each point of entry to your equipment, be it an entertainment unit, a computer, a refrigerator or a router, needs it's own protection, even from your own home network. Most surge protectors are rated in Joules, but that only measures how much power they can absorb over their lifetimes before they fail. The important specifications are clamping voltage and response time, both of which should be as low as possible. In that regard, this APC surge protector is adequate for most home applications. Finally, a word about voltage conditioning, which can be just as important as protection from lightening strikes. If you live in a single family house of fairly recent vintage, you probably don't need to worry much about this and surge protectors such as this one are fine for your needs. On the other hand, if your wiring is more than 30 or 40 years old, or if you live in an apartment building, you definitely need more than a surge protector. For example, if your neighbor down the hall flips on their 1000 watt amplifier at the same time that the upstairs neighbor turns on their oven and that your air conditioning cycles on, you're likely to experience a momentary drop in line voltage. For a lot of computers, that can be a problem - a BIG problem. Over time, the data on your hard drive or SSD will be corrupted. A power line conditioner, which is a surge protector with added circuitry to protect against transient changes in line voltage, will protect you against damage from these transients. However, they do so at a cost of what can be a few hundred dollars a piece. If you are going to spend that kind of money to protect your computers, you might as well get an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), particularly if your area is prone to power outages. A UPS will not only protect you against voltage fluctuations, but it will shut your computer down gracefully in the event of a prolonged power outage. Buyer beware, though - a lot of UPS's use a simulated sine wave output that for a computer is worse than having nothing. You need to buy a UPS with a pure sine wave output - they cost more than twice as much, but can help to save your data, particularly if you haven't invested in cloud-based backup. If you're wondering why someone who's obviously computer savvy is using such a simple surge protector, let me explain. CyberPower warns agains connecting a laser printer to any of their UPS units. Indeed, the warranty is void if one attempts to do so. My wife and I live in a high-rise building with old wiring, so we're not about to be without our UPS's. We both have multi-function laser printers and for these, the APC surge protector is perfect. The printers have connections to power, the telephone line and our home network. The APC surge protector provides protection for all of these.
