UPS Eaton 3S Mini – Review

UPSs are quite useful, but relatively difficult to recommend, since at such a low level, it is difficult to see them as something essential for the home or even the office. The Eaton 3S Mini UPS is one of them, very small in size and capacity, since it is designed for very low consumption accessories.

The intention of these UPSs is to keep these devices active during small power outages such as spontaneous repairs or when the differential trips.

We are grateful to EATON for providing us with the product for analysis.

Unboxing

The Eaton 3S Mini UPS is included in this box, offering a wide range of use cases where a backup battery is useful. Besides the usual router use for maintaining a stable internet connection with a laptop, there are virtual assistants like Amazon Echo , cloud gaming consoles, security cameras that save content to local storage, and central controllers for smart homes.

The back is more like a condensed instruction manual, with indications of the battery control LEDs, the connections and the types of barrel connectors that are included in the package.

These are the four connector models that are compatible with the Eaton 3S Mini UPS. With these four, it is very likely that our device is compatible, but being what is obviously a proprietary format and when more and more compatibility is chosen, as is happening with the USB-C connector in mobile phones, it is quite disappointing. opted not to have a power or USB connector to ensure that we don't have to deal with proprietary connectors and have to store them in case we want to reuse this UPS in the future.

It might seem trivial to complain about something as small as proprietary connectors, but we're thinking ahead. There's always the possibility of the plugs getting lost or misplaced accidentally, while moving things, or simply forgotten in a drawer. Using a common, unified connector would easily eliminate this problem. On the other hand, we understand that it's done for safety and space reasons, since one of the biggest selling points of the Eaton 3S Mini UPS is its small size, allowing it to be placed almost anywhere. Adding a USB or power port would have made it even larger, or prevented us from connecting devices with integrated, inseparable cables and power adapters.

Design

Taken out of the box and posing for the camera, you can see the extreme simplicity of the Eaton 3S Mini UPS. It is a simple UPS with a very low capacity, with less electrical capacity than that of a mobile phone and therefore it only has its own brand and the output cable.

The power output, for connecting to our devices, uses a cable with a proprietary design of two female pins: the idea is that we use any of the four standard pins, although this easily eliminates any device that has a power input that is not on them, such as any device that receives power through a USB connection.

A good detail is that it has a series of LEDs to indicate how much battery it has, especially when its battery capacity is less than half of that of a current mobile. But it is intended for small accessories that process very little information and electricity and that would be a huge hassle if their use were disabled.

Characteristics of the Eaton 3S Mini UPS

• Input voltage: 90-264 V AC
• Input frequency: 50/60Hz
• Output Voltage/Amps: 9V/3A, 12V/3A, 15V/2,4A, and 19V/1,89A
• Outlet Connection: 5,5 x 2,5, 5,5 x 2,1, 4,75 x 1,7 and 3,5 x 1,35 barrel adapters.
• Power: 36 W
• Lithium ion battery
• Battery Capacity: 3,7V/2200mAh x 2
• Dimensions: 95,5 x 30 x 136 mm
• 0,4 Kg of weight
• Operating temperature: 0ºC to 35ºC
• IEC 62477-1 Safety, CE Mark and CB Report
• EMC:IEC 62040-2

Gallery

Experience with QNAP TS-233 NAS

First and foremost, we must understand that we are dealing with a very small UPS . Its purpose is to provide power to very low-consumption devices, such as a router to maintain internet access during a power outage or to keep the devices in a smart home running. This explains its limited battery capacity. The most common use for such a small UPS is to keep the connection point online and not depend on the coverage in our area. According to the manufacturer, in this case, it lasts for up to 80 minutes before running out of power.

In our tests, it came close enough to the promised runtime. Clearly, this is a UPS for home or very small business use, useful during power outages. But at least in Spain, the electricity quality is generally good enough that it's hardly essential , at least for home use, given that power cuts are infrequent, occurring only once or twice a year. Power outages usually happen because a transformer at the substation is under repair, which are typically short-lived. It's possible for the problem to be serious, such as a specific case where a substation fuse blows and the outage lasts the entire workday. In this case, the Eaton UPS at least gave us an hour and a half, close to two, of reliable internet connection to let friends and colleagues know we're without internet access if we're working from home. In this situation, it would be especially helpful if we have a relatively small data plan so we don't use it up during those hours. But we already warned that this is a really extreme case and only considered with the use of an internet connection.

For offices, the situation is very similar, and prolonged power outages are much less likely if you're in an industrial building or an office floor. However, it's always wise to have a battery backup with devices like security cameras. All things considered, we weren't disappointed, as it fulfilled its purpose of providing power to our internet connection in case of outages.

We are a little disappointed that you don't have other options. It could have been a mobile charging point by including some USB ports that would have at least made it an additional current transformer in offices or houses where there are many mobiles or tablets, or by having a charger in the living room.

The fact that it works through small proprietary pins is one way that it is going to be used in very low power products. But there is the inconvenience that they are proprietary and we will have to store them knowing where they are in the event that we have to connect the Eaton UPS to another device. In addition, it only allows connection to one at a time, although it is understandable knowing that it is a home and office UPS, not business quality.

We do see a very powerful use for it when ordering and connecting multiple devices simultaneously in homes and offices with numerous home automation systems or where it's imperative that they are always connected . The box itself states that it's suitable for voice assistants and other home automation devices. It's clear that it will increase the budget allocated to making the house more automated, but it's the best safeguard we have against potential power outages.