UniFi UPS Tower Review: A Handy Backup Battery for a Home Ubiquiti Network

Ubiquiti today announces its latest addition to the UniFi ecosystem, the UniFi Uninterruptible Power Supply, which includes two hardware units, the UniFi UPS-2U and UniFi UPS Tower.

The former is a rackmount unit designed for a business network, and the latter is a desktop unit made for the home.

This brief review is based on my week-long experience with the UPS Tower, which is now available. If you opt for the UPS-2U, slated to be available later this month, expect a similar experience. Besides their form factors and power capacities, the two are practically the same.

Here’s the bottom line: The UPS Tower is an excellent battery backup, worth its $159 price tag for anyone needing those extra precious minutes for a few critical devices to shut down properly in the event of a power outage. For those with a home-grade UniFi network in need of such a solution, it’s a must-have.

Ubiquiti UniFi UPS Tower: An Ethernet-managed smart UPS

Out of the box, the UPS Tower looks like a typical UPS. As the name suggests, it’s a, well, tower device with two arrays of ten three-prong (technically, NEMA 5-15R) electrical outlets on the back. All of them feature power surge protection, and five are also linked to an internal battery to deliver backup power when needed.

Ubiquiti told me that the battery is hot-replaceable, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to open the Tower. Since I had no spare battery, plus the idea is relatively inconsequential, I didn’t go deep into this notion.

What makes the Tower different from many other UPSes is that it comes with a network port, allowing it to be managed via a network connection, rather than a USB port like most others.

Connect this port to the network, and you can manage it as a network device, allowing its power status to be accessible to multiple devices within the same network. That’s the key point that differentiates the UniFi UPS Tower from USB-based UPSes, of which the power status (battery vs. Online) is known to only a single USB-connected device.

The UPS Tower features a built-in Network UPS Tools (NUT) server, allowing it to work seamlessly with any NUT-enabled third-party device, such as a NAS server or computer. Additionally, when used in a UniFi network, it’ll work as a UniFi device, similar to a UniFi switch or a UniFi camera, eliminating the need for its NUT server.

As mentioned, the UPS Tower and UPS-2U serve the same purpose: like all UPSes, they provide extra time for connected devices to power down correctly during a power outage. How much time, you might wonder? That depends on the number of connected devices, but when used at full capacity, you can expect at least a couple of minutes.

The table below shows the differences between the UPS Tower and the UPS-2U.

Ubiquiti UPS Tower vs. UPS-2U: Hardware specifications

	UPS Tower	UPS-2U
Dimensions	288 x 99 x 280.5 mm (11.3 x 3.9 x 11″)	442.4 x 300 x 87.4 mm (17.4 x 11.8 x 3.4″)
Weight	8.17 kg (18 lb)	14 kg (30.9 lb)
Enclosure Material	Polycarbonate and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene blend	Galvanized steel
Form Factor	Desktop	Rack mount (2U)
Weatherproofing	IP20
Management	Ethernet
Networking Interface	1x 100/10MbE port for network connection 2x GbE ports for surge in/out
Power	1x OVC II AC in: NEMA 5-15P, 5x Battery backup/surge protection: NEMA 5-15R, 5x Surge protection: NEMA 5-15R	1x OVC II AC in: NEMA 5-15P, 4x Battery backup/surge protection: NEMA 5-15R, 4x Surge protection: NEMA 5-15R
Capacity	1,000VA/600W	1,440VA/1,000W
Type	Line interactive
Input Voltage Range	89—145V AC
Power Method	1x TN system, 120V AC, 12A Max., 50/60 Hz
Nominal Input Voltage	120V AC
Output Voltage	120V AC
Frequency Range	AC mode: 50/60 Hz ±5 Hz (Auto sensing) Battery mode: 60 Hz ±1 Hz
AC Voltage Regulation	±10% (Battery mode)
Transfer Time	6 ms typical; 10 ms max. (Battery mode)
Wave Form	Simulated sine wave (Battery mode)
Battery Type	1x Lead Acid 12V, 9Ah	2x Lead Acid 12V, 9Ah
Runtime	Full load: 2 min Half load: 7 min	Full load: 2.3 min Half load: 8 m
Battery Charging Time	6-8 hours recovery to 90% capacity
Overload (Online Mode)	110% 5 min go to fault 120% go to fault immediately
Overload (Battery Mode)	110% shutdown in 5 sec, 120% shutdown immediately
Short Circuit Protection (Online Mode)	Breaker, 250V AC, 15A
Output Short-Circuit Current	Ipeak 334.8A Irms 68.2A	Ipeak 348.0A Irms 115.1A
Ambient Operating Temperature and Humidity	0 to 40° C (32 to 104° F) 0 to 95% noncondensing
Operating Altitude	3,000 m (1.9 mi)
Status LED	Off: device not turned on Flashing white: initializing / factory default, Steady white: waiting for adoption, Steady blue: device adoption and working, Flashing blue: battery mode, Alternating white/blue: firmware upgrading, Rapid flashing blue: locate, Steady red: warning, Flashing red: low battery
Battery Indicator LED	All off: 0% (1) Steady blue: battery 1—19%, (2) Steady blue: battery 20—39%, (3) Steady blue: battery 40—59%, (4) Steady blue: battery 60—79%, (5) Steady blue: battery 80—100%	None
Release Date	October 7, 2025	October 2025
US Launch Price (Buy now!)	$159	$279

UniFi UPS Tower: Simple setup

You can use the UPS tower in the same way you would any UPS unit. Specifically, plug it into the power source, then plug the devices you want to protect against electrical surges into the five outlets (numbers 6-10) on the right. Plug the devices you want to have battery backup into the outlet on the left (1-5), and that’s it.

As long as the plugged devices don’t use more than their max output capacity, which is 600W in the case of the UniFi UPS Tower, everything will work as intended. When a power outage occurs, the UPS will beep to notify you, allowing you to turn off battery-backed-up devices in an orderly manner.

However, if you don’t want to have to attend to these devices manually, the Ethernet-managed notion of the UPS comes into play.

First, connect the Tower to the network via its network port. After that, in a non-UniFi network, set up a connected device with the NUT server—a process not covered by this review—and it will automatically shut down itself when a power outage occurs.

If you use the UPS Tower with a network hosted by a UniFi console, which is its intended usage, things are much more intuitive. For one, the Tower is recognized by the UniFi Network application of the UniFi console, just like any UniFi device. After that, you can “adopt” it via a single click.

After that, you can manage the Tower via the web user interface of the UniFi Network app or the UniFi mobile app. Additionally, connected UniFi consoles plugged into its battery-backup outlet automatically “know” what to do in the event of a power outage, giving you peace of mind.

Specifically, when I unplugged the Tower from the power to simulate a power outage, my UNAS server and other UniFi consoles would start shutting down when the UPS’ Battery Indicator had four or fewer LEDs left, indicating that it had 60% or less power left in the battery. I didn’t try any third-party device with the NUT server, but it’s safe to say they would shut down, too, when appropriately configured.

And these UniFi devices automatically power back up when I plug the UPS Tower back into power.

Ubiquiti UniFi UPS Tower: Reliable performance, runs hot

For this review, I’ve used a UPS Tower for over a week with a UniFi network hosted by a UCG-Fiber with a few UniFi PoE switches, and a UNAS 2. I was happy with it.

In my experience with PoE switches, I’ve found that many generic UPS devices are incompatible due to the nature of PoE. For example, I encountered an issue using the Enterprise 8 PoE with a few off-the-shelf UPSes—the switch would randomly shut down or restart.

For testing, I used the same switch and three others—Pro XG 8 PoE, 8-Port Flex 2.5G PoE, and Zyxel XS1930-12HP—simultaneously with the UniFi UPS Tower. All have been problem-free for over a week. It appears that this UPS can handle PoE power senders (PSE), which tend to draw power at varying rates, more effectively than others.

The nature of UPS is that you hope you’d never need to resort to its battery backup or surge protection functions—it’s like an insurance policy—and during my trial, there were indeed no surges or power outages. However, when I unplugged it from the power source, all protected devices behaved accordingly. And that’s all that matters.

UniFi UPS is a new line of UniFi hardware, and over time, there will be more updates and changes. At the current stage, though, you can expect the Tower (or the 2U) to offer the same capability as any advanced third-party UPS and then some.

On the downside, I noted that UniFi UPS Tower became warm, if not hot, quickly after being plugged into power and remained that way. It wasn’t burning hot, but it was enough for me to recommend placing it with ziable gaps from other devices, just in case. Don’t stack anything on top of it, and don’t put it down horizontally—that’d block the ventilation holes as shown in the photos.

Heat is never a good thing, and Ubiquiti’s equipment is generally famous for producing a lot of heat. We’ll have to wait and see how the UPS Tower pans out in the long term, and I do intend to keep using it for the foreseeable future. I’ll update this review if anything noteworthy comes to light. In the meantime, judging from other UniFi hot-running devices, such as the UDM or the U7 Pro Max, I’d say this is not a significant concern.

Conclusion

The Ubiquiti UniFi UPS Tower (as well as the UniFi UPS-2U) is not a must-have piece of hardware. However, if you live in an area with unstable power and have mission-critical hardware, especially those of the UniFi family, it’s an excellent power backup option, providing you with the much-needed peace of mind. Consider it today!