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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2023
I bought this to replace a CyberPower 1000PFCLCD which died after under 5 years of use.
When I first plugged the Tripp Lite SMART1500LCD in it had 93% as far as how much the battery was charged. The screen had a bunch of lines in it that looked kind of like digital cracks, it's hard to explain. I pressed on it lightly and they went away. These are lighter presses than removing pixel issues from an LCD screen. There was no stupid plastic all over it, unlike my previous cyberpower one.
Tested a vornado fan and it makes a weird noise when it goes on battery backup. The fan is making the noise, not the backup. Also when I turn the fan up it uses less wattage according to the battery backup. And when I turn it all the way up it says 0 watts.
I contacted support and they did a great job. They just explained that because of the modified sine wave on battery I'm going to hear that noise on the fan. I asked about if I would hear something like that with the computer and they said no and explained why. The answers check out and make sense. I tried to stay on the line afterwards to participate in the survey and it asked me on a scale of 1-10 how much would i reccommend eaton and I said 10. It never told me to press or speak, so I just spoke. It claimed to not hear me so I tried again multiple times, but it never detected speech. I pressed "1-0" on the phone and the line immediately disconnected.
When turning the unit on after connecting to the wall, pressing power does not turn it on. It goes on briefly, then shuts off. You need to hold the button for a few seconds, just like when shutting it off before unplugging it, in order to prevent it from going into battery mode when unplugging it from the wall.
The unit shows full charge and 30 min available when it's connected to the wall socket. I unplug it and it says 9 minutes. I would think it shouldn't go down in available runtime because the power consumption has remained the same.
It's difficult to push the buttons because u either need to reach out and hold the unit, or hold it with the same hand and block the display, or the unit will slide. This is in a configuration where it's standing on it's side on the desk. I noticed when grabbing the USB cable there are soft dome things that look like feet. These may stop that issue, but I'm going to leave them off for now as this is temporary because I'll be moving this year. I'm not sure how I want the unit oriented once I get everything setup in my new place.
The wattage ouput updates much faster than on the cyberpower unit I had.
It's not easy to find out which software is applicable to this unit. I first found software that said it was for XP and later, and on the same page there was software for win 8 through 11. so which one is it for 10? That's a contradiction. They used totally different versions and the XP and later one seemed like a newer version. I eventually found PAEM and it took forever to install.
PAEM required an IP, which makes no sense because the unit is connected via USB. This must be for some other purpose. I went back to the original downloads page and fonud a downloads section. instead of clicking "software donwloads" you should click "downloads". that led me to a much more obvious list of options. There were 3, and I chose the latest build.
The poweralert office installer also took a long time, and failed to install. it said it was interrupted before it could finish, but I never interrupted it. I ran installer again. I double-clicked the poweralert icon in the task tray after installation. It popped up a message saying "poweralert is not ready". The message box was really far away from the bottom right corner where I think it was meant to be. I right clicked the icon and chose "PowerAlert Web Interface" and was given this message:
"A system administrator has made changes to this device that requires PowerAlert to reboot. This will not disrupt power to connected equipment and devices. The login screen will appear when the reboot is complete and the system is ready for access."
It then took me to a login screen, to which I found the default login credentials by searching online are "localadmin" for both the username and password. It immediately had me set a new password. The password was saved by LastPass and it immediately failed to login because they use localhost and I have other credentials saved for other things.
The interface is unable to find firmware updates, but I found them online and found my unit shipped in late July 2023 with version 20.0.0.979. I found out the unit can send SMS or emails, but the SMS fails to send when I try it. Emails also don't send. As I continued to dig around I did find an SMTP server settings page. I may work on that later.
When trying to update firmware I ran into the issue of not knowing how to update it. I noticed a tarball was included and I figured this entire package must need to be uploaded using the interface, but couldn't find a place to do this. I took a look at the manual and it shows ues of PuTTy, and apparently has extensive features. I may look into that later, as well. I have too much on my plate right now, and I only bought this unit to replace my CyberPower unit which failed.
I'm hoping I don't need to go install this software on my work system via the admin account, since it seems to be managed via a web interface and have commercial features associated with it and I would think this would be a good indication that settings are not saved on the system, but on the unit itself, once modified. However, there were things during the installation phase that make me doubt this presumption.
The reasons for reducing the stars from 5 to 4 for the initial review are:
1. The unit indicates a runtime when connected to AC power, but once I unplug the unit, it indicates a runtime which is about 4x lower.
2. It was a hassle getting software installed and the firmware was never updated because it was also a hassle.
As stated in the title, if I have more issues or an even better experience, I will come back and update this.
When I first plugged the Tripp Lite SMART1500LCD in it had 93% as far as how much the battery was charged. The screen had a bunch of lines in it that looked kind of like digital cracks, it's hard to explain. I pressed on it lightly and they went away. These are lighter presses than removing pixel issues from an LCD screen. There was no stupid plastic all over it, unlike my previous cyberpower one.
Tested a vornado fan and it makes a weird noise when it goes on battery backup. The fan is making the noise, not the backup. Also when I turn the fan up it uses less wattage according to the battery backup. And when I turn it all the way up it says 0 watts.
I contacted support and they did a great job. They just explained that because of the modified sine wave on battery I'm going to hear that noise on the fan. I asked about if I would hear something like that with the computer and they said no and explained why. The answers check out and make sense. I tried to stay on the line afterwards to participate in the survey and it asked me on a scale of 1-10 how much would i reccommend eaton and I said 10. It never told me to press or speak, so I just spoke. It claimed to not hear me so I tried again multiple times, but it never detected speech. I pressed "1-0" on the phone and the line immediately disconnected.
When turning the unit on after connecting to the wall, pressing power does not turn it on. It goes on briefly, then shuts off. You need to hold the button for a few seconds, just like when shutting it off before unplugging it, in order to prevent it from going into battery mode when unplugging it from the wall.
The unit shows full charge and 30 min available when it's connected to the wall socket. I unplug it and it says 9 minutes. I would think it shouldn't go down in available runtime because the power consumption has remained the same.
It's difficult to push the buttons because u either need to reach out and hold the unit, or hold it with the same hand and block the display, or the unit will slide. This is in a configuration where it's standing on it's side on the desk. I noticed when grabbing the USB cable there are soft dome things that look like feet. These may stop that issue, but I'm going to leave them off for now as this is temporary because I'll be moving this year. I'm not sure how I want the unit oriented once I get everything setup in my new place.
The wattage ouput updates much faster than on the cyberpower unit I had.
It's not easy to find out which software is applicable to this unit. I first found software that said it was for XP and later, and on the same page there was software for win 8 through 11. so which one is it for 10? That's a contradiction. They used totally different versions and the XP and later one seemed like a newer version. I eventually found PAEM and it took forever to install.
PAEM required an IP, which makes no sense because the unit is connected via USB. This must be for some other purpose. I went back to the original downloads page and fonud a downloads section. instead of clicking "software donwloads" you should click "downloads". that led me to a much more obvious list of options. There were 3, and I chose the latest build.
The poweralert office installer also took a long time, and failed to install. it said it was interrupted before it could finish, but I never interrupted it. I ran installer again. I double-clicked the poweralert icon in the task tray after installation. It popped up a message saying "poweralert is not ready". The message box was really far away from the bottom right corner where I think it was meant to be. I right clicked the icon and chose "PowerAlert Web Interface" and was given this message:
"A system administrator has made changes to this device that requires PowerAlert to reboot. This will not disrupt power to connected equipment and devices. The login screen will appear when the reboot is complete and the system is ready for access."
It then took me to a login screen, to which I found the default login credentials by searching online are "localadmin" for both the username and password. It immediately had me set a new password. The password was saved by LastPass and it immediately failed to login because they use localhost and I have other credentials saved for other things.
The interface is unable to find firmware updates, but I found them online and found my unit shipped in late July 2023 with version 20.0.0.979. I found out the unit can send SMS or emails, but the SMS fails to send when I try it. Emails also don't send. As I continued to dig around I did find an SMTP server settings page. I may work on that later.
When trying to update firmware I ran into the issue of not knowing how to update it. I noticed a tarball was included and I figured this entire package must need to be uploaded using the interface, but couldn't find a place to do this. I took a look at the manual and it shows ues of PuTTy, and apparently has extensive features. I may look into that later, as well. I have too much on my plate right now, and I only bought this unit to replace my CyberPower unit which failed.
I'm hoping I don't need to go install this software on my work system via the admin account, since it seems to be managed via a web interface and have commercial features associated with it and I would think this would be a good indication that settings are not saved on the system, but on the unit itself, once modified. However, there were things during the installation phase that make me doubt this presumption.
The reasons for reducing the stars from 5 to 4 for the initial review are:
1. The unit indicates a runtime when connected to AC power, but once I unplug the unit, it indicates a runtime which is about 4x lower.
2. It was a hassle getting software installed and the firmware was never updated because it was also a hassle.
As stated in the title, if I have more issues or an even better experience, I will come back and update this.
