Database of UPS inverter output waveforms (updated)

Others (A-F)

Ablerex

MARS MS1000RT

On-line rackmount unit labeled 1 kVA/700 W. Ablerex is the original manufacturer. Idle power draw ranges from 20 to over 70 W as the PFC cycles so the true value is somewhere between.

AEC (Armen Electric Corporation)

Star T3 3 kVA (ST-3100)

High-power on-line (double conversion) UPS, 3 kVA/2.1 kW. Battery cabinets may be stacked, but with just one cabinet the recharge times are already very long. It MUST be closed during loading otherwise it overheats.

ARTronic

ART 2200VA

Quite likely another “Must Power” (or any other way too similar crappy design) origin unit. Labeled 2000 VA apparent, 1200 W of active power, still comes with only two high-rate (9Ah) accumulators. With brand new pieces, it is capable of delivering the power, but only for mere moments as it draws about 75-80 amperes (!) out of them. Invertor efficiency near maximum load is peaking at just about 68 %. No-load power draw is slightly above 25 watts so not great either. Of course has the typical, almost not even moddified, square wave for its output.

Powersonic 2000VA

This unit has somewhat different front panel with only one green LED, and that’s about all the difference from ART series. Labeled the same 2000 VA apparent, 1200 W of active power, everything else is all the same too.

Powersonic 2200VA

Even worse than the 2000VA version, labeled 2200 VA apparent, but only 1100 W of active power! Invertor efficiency near maximum load is peaking at just about 70 %. No-load power draw greatly varies between 18-45 watts all the time. Otherwise pretty much the same.

Belkin

F6C800frUNV

Smaller grey brick with french outlets (type CEE 7/5) with power of 800 VA/450 W. Line-interactive with two accumulators, what a coincidence the output is similar to one of those APC Back-UPS RS 800 VA units.

Best Power Technology

Fortress LI 660 VA (QLI660VA)

An antique UPS, most likely line-interactive. Labeled power 660 VA/400 V. After 13 years the driving logic was not able to operate anymore with unknown brand c(r)apacitors, after replacement with quality ones it operates normally again.

It is impressive how close this thing is to a sine wave. On the other hand, battery charging is quite rippled.

Chloride

PowerLan Plus 750

A UPS from times when back-up time still meant something, 750VA/525W model with four accumulators (2×2 in series). Line-interactive with sine wave output. It is a small horror to get to the batteries.

CyberPower

BR1200ELCD

This 1200VA/720W labeled unit of a “BRICS LCD series” is likely a new generation over the BU series below. CyberPower claims it is still line-interactive, which I have not (yet) tested, however, the internal arrangement supports this. I have no idea whether it uses aliminium, or copper wound transformer, it is quite heavy but also the iron core is large, however, I found that it has pretty much the best efficiency I have seen so far from unit using ordinary iron-core transformer. At full load, I measured roughly 77-83 % (the latter with larger/stronger accumulators), which is quite nice result, enabling the unit to work for about a minute even with two accumulators of just ~5Ah capacity.

The idle power draw is 23.17 W while at full charge, once the unit decides it is fully charged, it stops charging and than the draw falls to just 2.76 watts. Very nice feature, which also does not put that much of stress on the stand-by power supply (as long as the accumulators are not toast, working more like resistors). Its output is still the same modified square wave, pretty much identical to what the majority of the UPSes on market output. Still, over the older BU units, this is nice improvement, showing that CyberPower maybe takes things seriously and tries to actually bring improvements, not just cutting corners in the endless price wars.

BU600E

This 600VA/360W labeled unit is supposedly a line-interactive (or providing AVR) unit. I have not tested that myself, but I wonder how true that information is, since this unit only has bay for small, 5/5.4Ah accumulators. So labeling it 360 watts is clearly a lie, according to my measurements this unit can never ever deliver that. I am quite certain it uses aluminium-wound transformer, which is constantly hot even idling, because of it being used both ways, that is, when on utility power, it powers the PCB and provides charging via linear regulators. So it consumes up to 12 watts even fully charged, making the transformer quite hot.

Things got much worse when I tried to load it to maximum load – voltage immediatelly dropped under 220 V AC when running from inverter, and it was dropping in real time all the way under 200 volts. Being loaded with incandescent light bulbs, with lowered voltage, their power draw fell too, under 300 watts even, yet voltage was constantly dropping as battery voltage went down. No wonder that was happening so fast, I’ve barely managed to measure very rough efficiency at just about 55 %, that is most likely the worst result I have ever seen so far. Even despite not providing that high power output, it was drawing over 50 amps from the small accumulator!! So you can see my wondering about it’s AVR quality when even the inverter was providing such horrible output.

Seling such cheap units and marketing them with features they barely (or not at all) provide, just to sell anything and make competition sell nothing, is very dirty practic. I would not have expected such shameful behaviour from CyberPower, which profiles itself as not that dirty brand, yet they obviously see no bottom, when not even Must-Power-origin units are low enough for them.

Value600ELCD

The low-end and very cheap CyberPower units are – unsirprisingly – made by Must Power, pretty much as almost everything else in this price segment. It is dirty cheap and dirty bad 600VA/360W unit, line-interactive. Well, not that bad actually, unlike older units from Socomec, this one was at least capable of providing almost full power: with 340watt output it managed to do 1 minute and 2 seconds with brand new Panasonic 9Ah battery. One would expect at least five minutes, but than it is still better than less-than-a-minute which Socomec showed, here you have at least a chance to turn your PC off. But it is mostly the craziness of sucking over 30 amperes from single battery manufacturers do which results in so short runtimes. Modified sinewave output as usually, idle power draw 11.5 W.

Professional Rackmount LCD Series 1500 VA (PR1500ELCDRT2U)

An on-line rackmount 2U UPS with power of 1.5 kVA/1 kW. Uses low-profile high-power type-A relays, it is difficult to get spare ones. Probably of Must Power (or similar) origin, I personally do not trust these OEMs.

Eaton

3105 350i

The Eaton 3105 350i is a low-end unit with integrated accumulator which provides power of 350 VA/210 W. It is of course an off-line model with modified square wave, you can see the output quality with long periods of almost zero voltage.

Ellipse ECO 1200 USB FR (EL1200USBFR)

Line-interactive standing UPS with Schuko outlets (so not a FR for sure) with that EcoControl-thingy, whatever that is. Provides 1,2 kVA/750 W. Waveform is modified square wave, somewhat better than in the case of 3105 and it can truly work with some 500watt ATX PSUs with active PFC and another kilowatt in non-backuped plugs. More load trips the integrated circuit breaker.

Nova AVR 1250 (66824SG)

The Eaton Nova AVR 1250 is an older, now EoL’d line-interactive series. On first glimpse it reminds me of the Must Power units, but the internals are completelly different. It seems that these units may have something in common with the MGE Nova AVR models from MGE UPS Systems which Schneider Electric had to sellto Eaton when it acquired the APC. The electronics of this unit is very simple though it uses quality PCB at least, the UPS also has much larger transformer (with true copper winding). It is rated 1250 VA/660 W. Its fan is constantly-running though. The output is the usual square wave and the idle power consumption is slightly over 29 watts.

5E 650 VA (5E650iUSB)

With the 5E (aka essential) series Eaton is most likely trying to compete with all the chinese plastic craps from Must Power (or similar ones as they all look alike). This unit also looks quite similar to most of the others and it is very likely they actually have it made on separate line, or possibly they bought some of the chinese fabs to produce these wonders for themselves. The design is likely theirs as the board appears somewhat different though. As the others, this wonder uses the el-cheapo board material with so thin paths (who knows whether is is even copper, or how pure), very difficult to solder or otherwise work with. Filled with Jamicon TK crapacitors and garbage accumulators (such as Leoch) for the most part. There is also large transformer with large (but light) iron core and aluminium winding for sure to make it as cheap as possible. The 5E650iUSB is rated at 650 VA/360 W.

The modified square wave looks like exactly the one from the Must Power units we’ve seen sold under many brands. There is not really that much to invent on modified square wave, but these waveforms look almost identical still. The idle power draw is quite low at just about 7.19 watts, which is nice, however Eaton just promises something not capable of providing regarding the rated power. Their own loading diagram ends at some 262 W and 1 minute runtime, with full load this is barely a few tens of seconds in real life. And that’s with brand new Yuasa SW280, one of the toughest ones in this size. Any small increase in internal resistance and the UPS shuts down almost immeadiatelly, as its cut-off voltage is usually arround 10.5 V, but SLAs of this size drop voltage very fast under that value with current draws over 50 amps. That’s quite obvious as the efficiency I managed to measure at about 290W power draw was just some 63 %. This is the reason why for example older APC units used larger-sized SLAs (12-15 Ah).

5E 850 VA (5E850iUSB)

The 5E850iUSB, rated at 850 VA/480 W, is just higher-rated variant of the previous 650VA one. And wait for it – still using only single 7-9Ah accumulator!! As previously, their own loading diagram ends at some 375 W and 1 minute runtime, with full load it goes down in just a few seconds and that was with brand new Panasonic 9Ah accumulator. That’s quite obvious as the efficiency I managed to quickly measure was not even 60 % this time with current peaking high over 55 A. Single accumulator of this size simply can not provide that, the voltage falls down very quickly, so combined with the UPSes pre-set cut-off voltage, it just shuts down (and voltage on the accumulator reverts back right away). With just 315W load it worked for like 2 minutes with 66% efficiency. For me this is terrible to see how deep Eaton is willing to sag. Not that APC is much better with their latest generation of cheap units, but…I would expect some decency from certain brands to just don’t cross some line. Guess that money does not stink, eh?

There is of course the same modified square-wave output, unsurprisingly. The idle power draw is still quite low, though signifficantly higher than observed with the 650VA one, at about 13.7 watts.

5E 1500 VA (5E1500IUSB)

This is slightly larger version rated at 1500 VA/900 W. Again filled with Jamicon TK crapacitors, linear voltage regulators burning lots of power (so the no-load consumption is around 20 W) and garbage Leoch accumulators. It only held about half the specified runtime (granted, it was slightly overloaded).

The modified square wave looks like pretty much the same as the 850VA variant above outputs.

5SC 750 VA Tower (5SC750i)

Modern line-interactive brick with pure sine wave output. Equipped with advanced electronics, it strongly dislikes induction load (2kVA separation transformer not without any other load, not with 40W light bulb on the transformer secondary, not in parallel with its primary) so this one seems to not be good for motors. I don’t know where the problem was but I have only seen half-waves in there.

5P1550i

Modern line-interactive series with sine-wave output. Capacity of 1550 VA/1100 W.

Emerson

PowerSure PSI PS1440RT2-230

Emerson, now Liebert, rack-mount model of 2U size, line-interactive with 1.44 kVA/1.08 kW output. Sine wave.

Eurocase

EA620 2000VA PURE SINE WAVE

Eurocase EA620, aka rebranded East EA620, labeled as line-interactive sine-wave unit with 2000 VA/1600 W capacity. While the inverter is able to provide such power, for a limited time at least, only three 9Ah accumulators definitelly are not at all so do not count on more than couple tens of seconds. At least the H variant of this model with four accumulators (48 V nominal) is needed for any decent runtime, or the East should rate it lower at aprox. 1500 VA/1200 W. Also while the PCB is not such a garbage as one would expect from unit of this price, the transformer with aluminium winding definitelly is, for that reason the idle power draw is huge: 47 watts. For this reason its fan runs constantly and even than the UPS smells when new. We measured efficiency around 78 %. Also the front panel buttons are quite insensitive (and you must press two of them simultaneously for many actions on top of that).

FSP Group

EP1000

I first thought FSP would be manufacturing their own uninterruptible power supplies, but I could not be further from the truth. Well, it depends, I heard FSP has some share in the manufacturing company, supposedly Must Power. The EP family consists of blue/black models with just LEDs, no display. These units have very simple and cheaped electronics, they often suffer from overheating LM7812CT linear regulator baking surrounding components. It has capacity of 1000 VA/600 W, only passive (thus very bad) cooling. This particular piece also had some polish LEOCH batteries which failed in less than 3 years, leaked and have completelly eaten through the wire connecting both batteries.

The ordinary simulated „sine wave“. Sine wave in their dreams maybe. Thanks to poor efficiency, the output voltage is low and because of the waveform, even incandescent light bulb is visibly flashing.

PP2000

The blue/black or black FSP PP family is one of the many OEM versions of plastic chinese Must Power UPSes (which come under tens of other brands). This versions comes with LCD but the electronics is the same in both cases. This is 2kVA/1.2kW version with integrated fan, but it still runs quite hot and has bad efficiency as the main transformer has aluminium windings, both primary and secondary. All these chinese units share such transformer. This unit had Yuasa batteries which failed in 3 years anyway. Modified square wave output.

Galleon 3k

The FSP Galleon is on-line UPS labeled 3 kVA/2.4 kW, of course with true sine wave. OEM is possibly Must Power again, or some other chinese company.

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