On Fri, 27 Jul 2018 09:10:25 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Who makes good domestic UPSes these days? Looking for about 500VA (need
to put a power meter in to be sure) and 30 mins runtime.

Most small UPS's are designed with an up time of about 10 minutes at
full load, ie long enough to see if the power comes back ina minute
or two and long enough for things to shutdown nicely if it doesn't.
So your looking at a 1500 VA unit.

Also be aware that UPS's are far more sensitive to overload than the
mains. Switching on a CRT monitor did't bother the mains but the UPS
would instantly shutdown.

But it's more about which make and possibly series are any good?

Now that I've got at my APC Smart UPS 700 to stop it cooking
batteries it "just works". It did before but would kill a set of
batteries in 3 to 4 years. Charge rate far too high for the
temperature of the batteries. In March 2014 I fitted a fan, reduced
the charge rate and replaced the batteries., That set of batteries
are still working fine. The cheapo PC slot exhaust fan has just
needed to be replaced but that's only a fiver versus £50 ish for a
new set of batteries...

Battery cooking is a well known trait of APC UPS's, so unless you
willing to dive in and mod your new UPS or can find real evidence
that a given model doesn't cook the batteries I'd avoid APC.

--
Cheers
Dave.