Opinions on this surge suppressor/voltage regulator/filter

The price for this unit is $45-$60 and for what it does that seems like a great price. Let me know if I'm missing something, is there a catch?

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=LE1200

Nothing wrong with it as APC has a lot of experience with making high qualilty products that do what they claim to do.

However, some people are under the misimpression that 'voltage regulation' means it constantly adjusts the voltage to maintain a constant 120 volts. It does not (none of them do, except for the high priced products that fully regenerate the AC and it is debateable as to whether that is even necessary).

Devices with AVR only boost or attenuate the voltage when it falls outside of a preset range. So if for example you have it set to a range of say 98 volts to 130 volts it will only kick in and adjust the voltage to 120 if the voltage from the line drops below 98 or rises above 130. Still it should do a good job with surge protection (it's REAL purpose) and for the occasional events where the line voltage rises above or drops below the 'acceptable' range it will kick in and adjust it back to 120 or thereabouts.

The APC H10/15 units allow you to set the range as do nearly all of their UPS units that I've owned.

Thanks for the detailed response MDS. Yeah I knew that it was a threshold type device but I don't see if this one is adjustable anywhere in the link. It may be set at the factory.

Where I live electricity is in short supply in summer months and we get a few brown outs when everyone is running their A/C's each year, I think we had about 6 or 7 last summer lasting several hours each. Any idea what the typical voltage of a brownout is? And would this device I linked help?

The H-10 looks like a great unit but I'm trying not to spend $240 bucks on a unit for one 100 watt receiver and a DVD player. I'm using a basic $50 Panamax power strip now for basic filtering/surge suppression but if this other $50 APC unit can correct for the voltage drops this summer it would be silly not to get one.

My UPS is currently set to a range of 88 to 138 and I believe that is the default as I don't recall ever changing it. It says the voltage is currently 126.
That is a range of nearly 25% on the low side and 15% on the high side.

I'm not sure if a brownout is a specific low voltage level or a specific period of time. It's rained here every single day for the last 3 weeks and the status page said the UPS switched to battery 1 time due to a blackout of 4 seconds.

Maybe a brownout is a shorter period.

A brownout occurs when there is very little energy getting through. Blackout means no energy being passed.

Brownouts can cause severe damage to large appliances (fridge) due to the lack of power.
Personally, I think a UPS is more valuable than an AVR. The UPS will at least allow for electronics to cool down properly when there is a blackout, if they are fan cooled. I believe most UPS systems have surge protection as part of the package.

-pat