I have two APC SmartUPSs to protect all my gear here, one 1000VA and another 2200VA. The 2200VA is from 2009, and the 1000VA is even older (2003) - both have been going strong without problems for over a decade and all I had to do was replace the batteries every 4-5 years. Both UPSs have saved my bacon (I'm a software developer) during power outages, enough times to be worth their weight in gold (well, not quite, eheh, you will understand the joke if you ever had to lift one of these
1. I just retired my last functiong APC unit from that era within the last year, they were great. Kept buying them after 2007 when Schneider bought them. Those post 2007 units all died by 2014, none lasting 5 years. I had one unit connected to my exercise bike just for the power conditioning; wattage is small, just powers the display unit .... had the PCB in the bike replaced 4 times before dumping that one. Called Customer Service, sent emails, multiple tunes .... never got a response. Before 2007, APC support was never great but decent, but after 2 weeks of nothing, that was the end of our relationship w/ Scheneider,
2 From your description, it sounds like you had the same "cube shaped" units that we used that ran about 55 pounds. Those served us well. Just bought a new Cyberpower tower 1500VA sinewave unit similar to this one in capacity and shape .... our 1st "non-cube ..... Have had 4 power outages, none more than a few minutes but one . I was playing an MMO when power went out and it lasted about 24 minutes before power was restored. Its a game from 2004 and this peak system load at the wall can be as high as 780 watts, with this MMO load, it's barely breaks 450; had plenty of capacity left when power returned. I have spoken to Customer Support twice, just software questions ... both times about 30 minutes .... they called back 2 days later "just the check and make sure that everything was OK".
From what I can tell the protect between the two are pretty even. The only thing I saw that was significant was the frequency tolerance. But a Gaming UPS ? Apparently, adding RGB makes something a gaming box . Lets look at the B1500MS ... SO this new one is a Gaming UPS and the B1500MS described below is not ?
"Specially designed for performance gaming equipment, this battery backup protects gaming PCs, consoles and accessories from damaging power surges, interruptions and outages. "