Sooner or later one producer will decide to mark them properly and others will change to compete. For now, most consumers don’t know the difference. Sad, but typical.

AmpHours is the rating that we really need to know, but not one major !@#$ UPS maker prints that on the box. Because AmpHours *cost money*, so a high number (which is what we customers want) means high cost to the UPS maker. but I digress…

AmpHours is the rating of the batteries in the UPS. e.g. a 12v gel battery I use for my home-brew off-road bicycle lighting system has 7Ah. That’s Seven Amps for an hour, or One Amp for Seven Hours… get it? (i.e. 12v*7A = 84W of power for an hour) That means that I can run my headlight, which draws 35W for right around two hours. I guess UPS makers thing we are all blithering idiots who can’t do simple math like this. *sigh*

What we *really* need to know about UPSes is:
How many joules (or 3600th watt-hours) does it have?
What is the maximum load the inverter can handle? (this is where the Watts listed actually means anything)
What kind of special power handling features (over/under voltage/current circuitry) does it have to obviate *switching* to the battery?
What kind of surge/noise filtering does it have? (again, with *real* specs. not the obfuscating BS they give us)
Maybe a couple of other things…

but god forbid any company should actually be *clear* and concise about the specs of their equipment. *sigh*

Sorry for the rant. I’ve been through the wringer with UPSes and the jerks/idiots who make/sell them. I hope amid my vitriol is some useful data.

Cheers!

That’s about it.