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Avoid Eaton 3S UPS's

RavenLunatic

RavenLunatic

RavenLunatic

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785
I bought an Eaton 3S 850 G2 back in November last year after I experienced a power cut that took out my Router and NAS for several hours. As it turned out the Eaton 3S not a very good UPS.

Mine failed after about 6 months of use. As the adage goes buy cheap buy twice. I discovered that the VA rating does not mean much and it’s the size of the battery and the quality of the inverter that matters. Eaton 3S is basically a glorified surge protector with a tiny battery not worth the £130 I paid.

I have replaced the Eaton 3S 850 G2 with an APC SMT750IC which works great in TrueNAS using the same usbhid-ups driver as the Eaton. It does cost 3 times as much, but I think it’s worth it, considering it costs less than a high-capacity HDD’s these days.

The Eaton failed to gracefully shut down my NAS three weeks ago during its first power outage despite draining the battery, and once a week thereafter it would shut down for no reason without draining the battery (it might even have been the UPS that caused the RCD to trip originally). I reached out to Eaton who claimed the original power cut could have corrupted the firmware and advised a factory reset, but I find that hard to believe.

So, the moral of this story is if you are looking for a UPS get one that is a real line‑interactive, pure sine wave output, with a large battery, and efficient inverter.
 
APC isn't that great these days either - they got bought out and the parent company is increasingly reducing quality of components.

Eaton nominally is a decent brand but the 3S line does seem to have some engineering issues - the mini has flawed battery protection which generally means the batteries die in a year.

UPS tend to have a hard life though - there is a reason enterprise grade are LOL money.
 
Yes, choosing a UPS is a minefield. Checking the ratings of all the different brands virtually all have a chunk of bad reviews. The APC one I got stood out by having 200 mostly positive reviews (89% 4 stars or higher).

Has anyone used APC SmartConnect? I am not sure about it downloading new firmware when it seems to be working OK. APC will give me an extra year warranty on the battery if I do.

The telemetry given over USB is very restrictive, just battery charge %, estimated run time, battery voltage and maybe something else I forget.
 
I went with APC over a decade ago. Sadly that venture went down the drain real quick as APC didn't test their products properly before sending it out. So they had issues even back then.

Went with Cyberpower UPS since the threat of rolling blackouts for 3 hours since the Ukraine War started. Have four of them (2 x 900W and 2 x 1000W) keeping up the entire household in case of issues and they've done swimmingly, keeping the ONT, Router, VOIP Box, DECT Phone, Switches, TVs, NAS, Doorbell, etc all online with power projections putting them all above the 3 hour mark. And now also have a Jakcery Explorer V2 (2000W) aswell for Solar charging and backup for heavier items (Fans, Air-Con, heaters, etc in case anything happens during heat waves or extreme colds, or if the fridge or freezer needs a backup from extended outage). Not cheap to invest into, but absolutely saves your bacon when you need it to.
 
Very first ups was a belkin, that was years ago lol

Moved to apc but had the battery need replacing far too quickly imo.

Current ones are cyberpower on my server and main pc, still have an older apc on the router downstairs though -
CyberPower CP1500EPFCLCD-UK PFC Series, 1500VA/900W - on main pc, mac mini, screens, speakers, switch, wifi adapter etc
CyberPower VP1600EILCD Value PRO 1600va/960w Tower LCD UPS - on unraid server (yes it does communicate with nuts), mini pc, screen
 
Eaton do have a little more than there fair share of junk products than some others. The Eaton DC-DC stuff is particularly bad.
 
Update on Eaton 3S 850 G2 situation

Solutions were provided by Amazon Customer Services

Resetting factory settings turns out to be a thing.

Solution 1: Perform a Hard Logic Reset (Clear the Power Surge Residuals) A sudden power cut followed by a high-voltage mains restoration can trap residual electricity in the UPS capacitors, confusing its firmware. A hard reset forces the microprocessor to reboot cleanly. Unplug everything: Disconnect all devices from the UPS outlets. Isolate from mains: Unplug the Eaton 3S power cable from the wall socket. Drain the power: Press and hold the power button down firmly for at least 15 to 20 seconds. You may hear a faint fade-out beep. Reboot: Plug the UPS directly back into the wall outlet (avoid extension leads) and turn it back on.



The UPS has something called EcoControl which is completely undocumented in any of the manuals or specifications.

Solution 2: Disable EcoControl (Master/Eco Socket Mismatch) The Eaton 3S 850B features a "Master" socket and "Eco" outlets. If your primary device (like a PC) is plugged into the Master socket and goes into a deep sleep, or if the power cut glitched the threshold sensor, the UPS will intentionally cut power to the Eco sockets weekly, assuming the peripheral equipment is no longer needed. Try moving your critical devices to the standard, non-Eco battery backup sockets. Alternatively, download the Eaton UPS Companion software via a USB data cable link to your computer and completely disable the EcoControl feature to prevent automatic power savings shutdowns.

There is no mention of this anywhere, none of the sockets are marked “Master”. I don’t recall what device was connected to what socket. I had a SFF PC as an OPNsense router/firewall, a TrueNAS Scale server, and a 10Gb switch attached to the battery backup sockets.

It would to me seem pointless feature for a UPS, why would anyone want battery backed sockets to turn off once a week?

The Eaton UPS Companion software is Windows only. I am not sure if turning it off in Windows would persist when the Windows PC is disconnected.

It does not send a signal to NUT to shut down gracefully when turning off the Eco sockets.



In my view this is a poorly designed UPS. I should not be having to do Hard Logic Reset every time there is a shutdown event just in case it has not discharged its capacitors. It should just work as normal when power is restored.

The EcoControl function doesn’t make much sense to me unless it’s basically being used as a fancy surge protector, and even then its not a very good one.

It’s hardly a power saving feature if it waits for a week before turning off everything without warning,

I have returned it for a full refund.


Edit: Eaton contacted me again and they are adamant the 3S 850B G2 does not have EcoControl. I have asked them for a better explanation as to why the UPS fails every 168 hours.

Edit 2: Eaton advised the "fault is not normal behavior, and strongly points to an internal hardware fault. There is no scheduled weekly function within the Eaton 3S that should result in a complete loss of output power". Make of that as you will. I feel that giving Eaton the benefit of doubt, and the weekly shutdowns are isolated to my unit, having to perform a hard logic reset after a power cut is still unacceptable.
 
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mattyfez said:
Why would anyone need a UPS in a typical home user situation? lol, talk about waste of money.
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Depends where you live - when we first moved to where I'm living now which is relatively rural brown outs and power cuts were not entirely rare - though they seem to have upgraded the supply more recently.

I keep my backup file server / NAS on a UPS as well just to reduce the potential for any issues.
 
mattyfez said:
Well what can I say... I've never had a personal UPS and I've never once thought I should buy one.
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they only let you shutdown your pc properly during a power cut

mines 4min battery at 780watts load or 80mins at 50 watts, normal web browsing probably 15-20mins
can run a moden for hours or some other low watt device.
 
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mattyfez said:
Why would anyone need a UPS in a typical home user situation? lol, talk about waste of money.
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As I said in the first post.

I experienced a power cut that broke my OPNsense firewall and TrueNAS Scale server. The cause took me hours to fix with no Internet, and potentially losing several TB's of Data.

Ever since i have made sure to create backups as well as disk images of all the critical machines on my network. The UPS I ended up with costs the same as a high capacity HDD, and to me its worth it not to have to experience a similar situation again.
 
mattyfez said:
Why would anyone need a UPS in a typical home user situation? lol, talk about waste of money.
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For lots of reasons. Surge protection, brown outs, to keep a system up in a power outage, to perform an automatic save. But most importantly it’s to flex on the unwashed RGB masses.

You buy them because of the layers of protection they offer.
 
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