I've got a monster H-2500 (don't worry I bought it at Best Buy when I worked there w/ my discount
) for my entertainment center in the living room, but I don't really feel like spending that much money to protect my computer/eyefinity monitors. What do you guys use to protect your stuff and what would you recommend to look for?
Did you read Monster's numeric specifications? Where does it list protection from each type of surge? It doesn't. Why did that missing spec not raise a red flag immediately?
View specs for a $7 protector sold in the grocery store. Similar specs. Why? Monster and grocery store protector are same protection circuit. If working in Best Buy, then you know Monster Cable has a long history of identifying scams. Then selling the same product for much higher prices. Monster even sold speaker wire with polarity. Because the wire was labeled, that $7 wire sold for $70.
So how does a little 2 cm part inside a power strip stop what three miles of sky could not? More numbers you should have been asking. How do hundreds of joules in that Monster absorb surges that are hundreds of thousands of joules? Magically because retail advertising tells a majority what to believe.
Effective protection costs about $1 per protected appliance. Effective protection is obvious once you ask where energy dissipates. Protection was always and only about one thing - where those hundreds of thousands of joules dissipate.
Either that energy dissipates harmlessly in earth. Or that energy is inside hunting for earth destructively via appliances. Nothing inside averts the hunt. Nothing. Only you make the choice.
For over 100 years, protection has always been about surges harmlessly absorbed outside. Obtain that solution from more responsible companies such as Siemens, ABB, General Electric, Square D, Leviton, or Intermatic. A Cutler-Hammer 'whole house' protector sells in Lowes and Home Depot for less than $50.
From the breaker box to earth ground is a bare, solid, quarter inch wire. That connects hundreds of thousands of joules harmlessly to earth IF you have installed a 'whole house' protector, if that wire is short (ie 'less than 10 feet'), if that wire has no sharp bends (ie does not go over the foundation and down to earth), if the wire is separated from other non-ground wires, if that ground is the single point earth ground used by all surge protection connections, etc.
Nothing here will make sense until you go to Lowes to touch the ‘whole house’ protector, 6 AWG wire, and ten foot copper clad ground rods.
Example: did you know all phone lines already have a 'whole house' protector installed for free? Required by code. So inexpensive and so effective ... but only if connected 'less than 10 foot' connection to the same earth ground. Often via a green or gray 12 AWG wire.
Where does energy dissipate? Every useful reply always discusses energy dissipation. No protector - not one - does surge protection. Either a protector connects energy harmlessly (and short) to single point earth ground. Or you have no effective surge protection.
Your choice. Only you install the 'whole house' protector. Only you must inspect or upgrade single point earth ground. In every facility that can never have damage, they waste no money on scam power strip protectors that are too close to electronics and too far from earth ground. In every case, every wire inside every cable connects short to single point ground. Either directly (satellite dish, cable TV - no protector used – even Best Buy sells the ground block). Or via a 'whole house' protector (telephone, AC electric).
What does every valid protector recommendations discuss? Where energy dissipates. A protector is only as effective as its earth ground - which the Monster does not have and will not discuss. Monster can sometimes make appliance damage easier. A superior protector costs about $1 per protected appliance.
