Can you recommend another type of power bar that doesn't cost $200? That's what I paid for this one.... Seems to me that there should be something cheaper that will do the trick. Or no? Do you have to spend that much an a power bar that protects?
It all depends on your local power situation and there severity of the threat in your area. coupled with what level of protection you need. Understand there is no perfect protection. I live in a rural area prone to severe summer weather and ice and snow storm in the winter season. So I need high protection, given my level of investment.
Broadly it comes down to surge protection, voltage regulation and isolation from the grid during high periods of instability.
The best surge protection comes from whole house surge protection installed at the panel. Otherwise you can buy strips and pay for the number of Joules of energy you want protection from. The more joules of protection, in general the more you will pay.
Voltage regulation and smoothing of ragged periods of AC supply can be ameliorated by active units. I don't know what your unit is, or its spec.
Then we get into battery units which will shave high voltage and bring up low voltage. It is often not understood that low voltage is damaging to modern equipment. In event of surge these units disconnect from the AC in a about 1ms or less and go to battery, and provide soft shut down on total power failure, ans can run your equipment for a varying length of time depending on power draw and battery capacity.
Then there comes the back up generator for times of severe instability and power outages.
In my case I have whole house surge protection, a UPS in all racks, to all equipment except the power amps. You can see a couple of these ACP units in the bottom of a couple of racks.
When things are really bad then there is this!
You really have to look at this like insurance. You look at your risk and assess what you are prepared to pay to protect your level of investment.
