APC Back-UPS, 1200VA, Tower, 230V, 6x IEC C13 outlets, AVR

Product Overview

AI-generated summary

The APC Back-UPS 1200VA (AVR, tower) at ~£128 ex-VAT is one of those “quietly sensible” buys for small offices—think networking gear, broadband/VOIP, a mini-server, or a couple of PCs that you want to ride through brief outages. The big advantage isn’t heroics on battery life; it’s the practical stuff: AVR helps when the mains is a bit wonky, and the unit is straightforward to manage and live with. With six IEC C13 sockets, you can usually tidy up a real little rack of kit without hunting for adapters.

That said, I wouldn’t buy it if you expect long runtime or you’re trying to keep a desktop workstation going for any length of time—this class of UPS is about controlled shutdown, not “keep running through power cuts.” Also, make sure your loads are sensible: if you’ve got laser printers, line-interactive power supplies with high startup draw, or multiple power-hungry devices, the battery will burn down faster than you’d like. For the right use case—protecting essential IT and avoiding corrupted work on short outages—it’s good value and very easy to justify. For anything beyond that, spend money where runtime and capacity actually matter.