I decided to pick up a low-end battery backup. I had just picked up the VTech Vonage system and decided I should have battery backup on my cable modem, Netgear router, and the VTech equipment. This was just in case I needed to make a phone call when the power was out and my cell phone wasn’t working. To be honest, I’m not really sure if it would even work or not. I also connected a laptop to the unit which doesn’t really need battery backup since it has its own battery, but I use the laptop to control and monitor the UPS unit.

The APC Back-UPS ES 350VA works quite well with both PCs and Macs. The larger the CA value the longer your equipment will stay on. Performance of any UPS is dependent upon how much equipment is plugged in and how much power it is drawing from the unit. Since all of my equipment is low power to an extent, I decided to get the lowest end system. If I were to plug in a desktop computer I would say the unit would only be able to power your system down in the event of a power failure.

For most people that’s all they need. They just want to be able to effectively protect their systems during power failure. For those running servers or high availability systems I would definitely go with something higher than the ES series.

For around $40, the APC Back-UPS ES 350VA does exactly what it is intended to do. I think compared to a normal surge protection unit it’s worth the extra couple dollars to get a little more protection for your system. If anyone has any other recommendations for good UPS systems for the readers, feel free to leave a comment or contact me.