Computer/et al. power backup & surge protection units.

Best in this class that I have bought is the Geek Squad 875VA that has a 4-screw door to battery on bottom; EZ off, battery drops with gravity, EZ on. Purchase prior to 2016, flawless & superior to all brands owned since. No more Geek UPSs made & wish I knew the true mfr.

Worse has been EVERY 3 years are the CyberPowers 1500VA one each from different eras/designs ... need a GYN/OB and one has to be taped shut. Also noted are how fickle have performed in past, not a good sleep directly after purchase.

In your experience, is there such a beast out there anymore that makes changing 1-2 12-9F2 batteries EZ if not fun? Best Buy no longer offers Geek Squad UPSs, I only found APC & CyberPower. Tripp Lite has worn out fast, worse than CyberPower be it backup for computers/et al. or TV/etc.

Anyone?

The APC SMT3000RM2UC I purchased recently uses a hot swappable battery cartridge. It's four screws and a plug to change out.

Big fan of APC here.

I run APCs at work. I've tried some of the "amazon ones" but they tend to crap out earlier and their battery sizes are weird and hard to access to change.

lazuras_dc said:

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I run APCs at work. I've tried some of the "amazon ones" but they tend to crap out earlier and their battery sizes are weird and hard to access to change.

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Thanks for the heads up. My APC battery just quit and I was thinking about buying a knock off. Will order direct.

Thanks to all thus far .... you were a good guide to considering this one ... or more ... https://rebrand.ly/aj5vixl
the battery is 28% more money than other 1500va but video shows EZ in-out, so worth it after wrestling cyberpower batt-changes twice now.

Kind of funny this topic just popped up as I'm in the process of replacing batteries in two CyberPower units. I got 4 years out of one and over 5 on the other on the original batteries. The newer one is more difficult (why am I not surprised) to swap batteries even though they utilize the exact same batteries. Fortunately not too big of a hassle thus far though. I purchased my replacement batteries from batterysharks on eBay. They were like $35 per set.

I've actually going to repurpose one of those as I ended up buying a rack mount UPS to power and protect all my home network and security equipment. CyberPower had a short-depth rack mount unit that was a perfect fit in my rack. I haven't looked at the battery replacement procedure yet, but hopefully it is easy enough to do without taking the unit off the rack.

I wouldn't buy a geek squad branded UPS. I also wouldn't buy a UPS that I wasn't sure that I could use bare batteries on.

Easy replacement battery cartridges make me concerned that they are going to be more customized. I just don't have to change batteries often enough for it to matter how hard it is to change them as long as they're made to be changed.

UPDATE
Oldest UPS CyberPower 1500VA got zapped by a whole buildling power surge ON-OFF-ON supply, made a HUGE CRASH noise, light white smoke from outlet rear in Apr 2024.

These UPSs did not skip a beat: all newer CyberPowers 1500 & 1000, APC 1500 and an older UPS Geek Squad 875.

Already not proud of its not coming back on after past minor outages decided to trash it.
Retrieving the only 4-month-old 2 batteries, discovered one on bottom WET and STICKY. Googling suggested capacitor got overworked/old/hot and leaked.

BTW Tom's Hardware has some threads whose titles begin ... another CyberPower goes up in smoke ... WTH?

Figured since all this was extremely difficult for me to track down, would post it for others mystified why money gone & UPS not working. Of course it's best if any of this is righted as hocus pocus so the true may come out. Don't have Geek smarts, prefer Ale smarts ...