I Won’t Be Able To Live Without This Anymore – Titan Elecstor UPS

There is not a lot of things an entire country can stand together on. But here in South Africa, there is that one thing, no it’s not our Rudby team. It’s that we are all fed up with Eskom and it’s Loadshedding. Most of us can still deal with Stage 2 loadhseeding, 2.5 hours a day without power we can deal with. BUT getting that notification that Eskom implemented Stage 4 or even worse Stage 6 or higher, there’s not a lot of things that can ruin your day quite like that.

I don’t know about you but the thing that grinds my gears even more is that the router is off and a lot of times I don’t even have mobile connectivity because the tower’s batteries are either dead or have been stolen. This prevents me from getting any work done as 70% of what I do is online.

Well luckily there is a great and not too expensive option for us and that are these Elecstor UPS systems from Titan. 

They sent over 3 of the “smaller” units to test out and see how long they last, how long it takes to charge and just what else you can do with them.

Specs

Titan has 6 options but the larger 3 will only be available next year. But you still have the 18w, 30w and 100w options. The first 2 are quite similar but have different outputs and battery setup. The 3de is quite a bit larger having more than double the output and battery capacity.

Price

Pricing is also quite good with the smaller to going for around R1000 and the 100W for R1800. This one is a bit more but honestly I would just get it because for those days when the Substation trips and you sit without power for an extra 6-12 hours. You’re going to wish you had a bit extra juice.

Design

The Eco and Eco Pro are quite small and very light, you can easily pop it in your bag and just take it with you where ever you want to go. The NPS is larger but still not that heavy. All 3 have a power button on the front but the 2 smaller units have a status LED and a 4x led battery indicator to show the percentage left. Whereas the NPS has a small screen showing the battery level but also the Watt and Voltage. 

IO

For the IO, all of them have at least 1x 5v USB Type A port on the front for charging your mobile device. Hower the 100w model has 2 Type A’s and 1 Type C port, so you can charge multiple devices at the same time. At the back the 18w model there is a fixed 2 point plug, 1x 5v, 9v and 12v outputs.

The Eco Pro also has the 5v, 9v and 12v outputs but has a extra type C for charging other devices and a detachable figure 8 power plug.

While the larger 100w has a detachable kettle plug for charging, 1x 9v or 12v port, 1x 5v, 4x 12v 3A ports and 5x 12v ports with a combined max A8 output.

Only the NPS has a visible fan for cooling but it was quiet and I can’t remember actually ever hearing it. They can get a bit hot when charging so just to be safe keep them in a well ventilated space.

With all 3 you get the Y power splitter along with 3 connector tips. The Y splitter allows you then to power not only your router but also fiber box if needed at the same time. They also feature short-circuit, overload and overcharge protection, which is definitely need for loadshedding and the constant power surges. I’m not a battery expert but it’s also good to not let the battery die each time as batteries have a charge cycle life. After which the battery degrades quicker or could just be dead at that point. Again I’m no expert but you would want to keep it above 25% at least. Thats, why I would recommend the larger 100w option epically because I don’t see an end to loadshedding and possiby it, will only get worse.

Battery Life Explained: Are you killing your battery with bad charging habits?

Now as for how long they last, I did quite a few tests. I’m currently on the farm so we don’t have fiber so I couldn’t test them with a router and fiber box but think the other tests will make up for that. 2 things to keep in mind, the times can be out by up to 30min as I wasn’t sitting right in front of them for the duration of the test. Also how long the UPS will last will depend on your router’s power draw and how much you use it so just keep that in mind.

Firstly I tested them with my Huawei B315 LTE router. This router had an average power draw of 4 watts which is lower than average but still a popular option. With the B315 both the Eco & Pro lasted around 8.5 hours and the NPS around 15 hours more than double the advertised time. 

The second test was with the Huawei B618 which used more power at an average draw of 7 watts. Both the Eco and Eco Pro lasted roughly 5 hours while the NPS lasted around 10 hours.

Test number 3 was tested again with the B618 but this time charging mobile devices as well at the same time. Here the Eco lasted around 3 hours, charging my phone’s 4000mAh battery from 0-85%. The Eco Pro lasted slightly longer at around 3.5 hours and and charged my other phone’s 4500mAh battery from 35% to full plus a bit on another phone. Lastly, the NPS lasted around 8 hours with me constantly switching between phones to charge. They advertise on the box that the NPS will last around 7 hours with a wireless router but from my testing, it lasts way longer. But again it all depends on your router.

As for charging, they were extremely quick with both the Eco’s charging full between 1 to 1.5 hours and the NPS in roughly 2.5 hours.

There we go the, if you are looking for something to get you rough loadshedding or just power outages in general then these will be the perfect option for you. To my knowledge they are not available out side South Africa unfortantly, but you should be able to find something similar to fit your needs.