[lcaillo]

The Monster products are fine in my opinion, but even though we sell them, I don't believe they are the best value for most people. The HTS 1000 MKII is, I agree, nicely built, but for the price I would likely pick the Panamax M8HC-PRO. While the Panamax does not have as high a Joule rating, they do provide much more detail on the performance of the unit and it has the over/under protection that the HTS 100 MKII does not. It concerns me that MC does not publish much detail such as the peak current ratings. MC seems to be more concerned with appearance and filtering, IMO. While filtering can be a benefit in some limited instances, most performance improvements that have been claimed are, as you said, likely optimistic. My view of filtering and line conditioning is that they should be used when there is a problem that cannot be fixed at the source, but are not assumed to be needed.

Nothing at all wrong with your choice, but the Tripplite can be had for a little more than half of either the Panamax or the MC and has a higher joule rating than either. I chose it for my challenge because of the good basic protection at a low price, without a lot of filter hype. Again, I am not promoting it, we sell the Panamax and MC units.

The above 3 brands, along with some of the Belkin peoducts, are some of the better surge suppression products I have found. I tend to not prioritize the noise reduction capabilities and lean toward the series/filter type units if that is really needed or desired. If I had a problem with noise, I would use a combination of the SeroSurge 2R15W and the Tripplite unit. The two could be found online for about $200. I should probably start another thread on noise suppression on a.c. lines. The need for it is very much overstated, IMO. Ironically, most of the benefits come in with audio systems, not video, which seems to be the focus of so much of the hype these days.