Monster HTS-2600 vs Panamax 5100 (1 Viewer)

[James W. Johnson]

I am tired of my cheap surge protectors and want to upgrage to something nicer looking plus maybe get a degree or so better quality line cleaning.
I would love to hear some feedback from those of you who own one either an HTS-2600 or a Panamax 5100 or have tried one or both.

thanks

 

[Chu Gai]

First let me begin by stating I have neither so my comments are directed to whatever information either Panamax or Monster provides. I'll not address the additional feature sets that either have as I don't know how you would weight them in terms of importance.

Generally speaking, Panamax is a bit more forthcoming with information compared to Monster. Nonetheless the important differences as I see it is that...

Monster is rated about 1000 joules more than the Panamax. This suggests that the Monster unit will have a longer lifetime since the lifetime of MOV's is more or less exponential with the joule rating.

It appears that the EMI/RFI protection in the Panamax unit is situated right after the power cord and gives you a 50 dB reduction (although we don't know what frequency range that covers...it's usually not linear and when values are presented they're typically the max available at a particular frequency) for anything that's plugged into the unit.

There is no corresponding number in terms of dB reduction from Monster. If you can get feedback from them that'd be great. Nonetheless, the Monster unit states that it has 3 separate filtrations. To me this indicates that the 3 banks of outlets: one low current audio (6 outlets), one high current audio (2 outlets), and 1 video (2 outlets) have individual EMI/RFI circuitry. The premise here is if any component in your audio chain during operation dumps EMI/RFI back down the power cord then a device that's on another bank of outlets will not be contaminated by it. This presupposes that
a) you've got a device that does this.
b) the level is sufficiently high that another piece of attached equipment (say your TV) is affected by it because the circuitry in the power supply doesn't adequately filter it out.
Does this happen? Damned if I know. This is one of those things James that you're going to have to with your gut on. I call it individual paranoia assessment.

I don't know where bigfoot country is. If it's in an area of the US with a lot of lightning activity and a high preponderance of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, then more concern should be directed towards installing a whole house unit.

Other units, certainly not as sexy looking as either of those two, that would provide similar protection with regards to comparable joule ratings and isolation between filter banks would be units from Tripp-Lite (Isobars) and Belkin's A/V Isolators. In both of these units, if I recall correctly, each pair of outlets has EMI/RFI suppression. Being a cumulative effect, the further one device is from another the greater the protection. So if each pair of outlets gives you a 90% reduction in EMI/RFI, then the second reduces that by an additional 90% and so forth.

Best of luck in your purchase.

 

[James W. Johnson]

Thanks Chu, Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch are often spotted here in the Northwest corner of the Washington State USA, I have seen one myself so I know they exist.

Up here we receieve pretty much zero lightning and anyways I have insurance.

 

[Chu Gai]

That was my sister in law. Wish I could've given you more to work on.

 

[James W. Johnson]

What was your sister in law? More to work on with what?

 

[Chu Gai]

Sister-in-law = Sasquatch but with more wrinkles.

More to work with in terms of your Monster/Panamax question.

 

[James W. Johnson]