Belkin 8-Outlet Surge Protector, 8ft Cord

I have purchased many of these power strips over the years. They do everything I want, prevent surges minus all the added on marketing junk I do not need like telephone inputs, cable inputs, USB power sockets.
I trust Belkin on these power strips to protect my equipment and continue to purchase them to this day.
Clean, simple robust protection minus the consumer frills. Personally it’s one of a few I would recommend to people.

This 8outlet medal has a nice heavy 8 foot cord with angled flush mount receptacle, the body is very clean and low profile, and the switch is where it should be, in the back so you don’t accidentally shut it off.
Best power bar for the money hands down.

Struggled to find a reliable and reputable surge protector manufacturer then heard of Belkin. Purchased two of these and haven’t looked back!

No problems and the added spacing between the outlet are great for those stupid fat plugs.

12 feet might be a bit much for traveling but to each their own.

[NOTE: they have lumped reviews for several models together on this page. To be clear I am reviewing the 6-foot 8-outlet model which does NOT have a swivel plug]

Like many people I have many AC power strips located all over my house. While they all serve their purpose, some are better than others. And some are definitely worse than others. I have yet to find the perfect power strip; it seems there is always at least one flaw.

I bought this one for a very specialized project but the pros and cons should apply to any household application you buy it for.

What I was looking for is a power strip with wide spacing between the individual outlets. You would be surprised how few are made that way. It makes me wonder if the manufacturers ever actually plug things in to their products when they are designing them. The reason this is important is that these days many thing use power transformers. While those “bricks” are small they still take up more space than a regular power plug, often making it difficult or impossible to use the outlet right next to it. For that reason I have found that power strips which have the outlets mounted sideways are more useful than those that mount the outlets up/down, yet most power strips seem to do just that.

After narrowing it down to finding a power strip that mounts the outlets sideways, I like to have space around them to accommodate those power bricks. Again, that criterion narrows my choices, as most brands tend to crowd the outlets close together.

After I lot of searching I found this one from Belkin, a company I have had good luck with in the past. Not only are the outlets well-spaced but they are staggered, which is even better.

My unique project that I bought it for was to build a battery recharging station in my garage. The wide-spaced and staggered outlets of this power strip worked out really well to be able to mount 3 eneloop chargers to it so I can charge up to 12 of those specialized batteries at one time. The strip has enough available outlets that I could also plug in a recharger for standard NiCad batteries and also the charger for my power tools. When not in use if I want I can turn the whole charging station off with the master switch on the Belkin.

WHY NOT 5-STARS?

Overall this is a well-made power strip with a heavy-duty cord but it has its quirks that detract from being a great product. The first is something that I’ve seen in power strips from many companies lately (leading me to believe they are all being made on the same assembly line). That is that the keyholes on the back of the strip are only notched in one direction, which is to mount the strip vertically with the cord coming out of the bottom. I wanted to mount it horizontally but the way the keyholes are made the strip would easily be knocked off the wall by brushing up against it. Most power strips used to be made with + shaped keyholes so the unit could be mounted in any orientation. The other complaint is that the way keyholes are molded into the plastic these days rather than being an open hole there is a plastic backing to the keyhole, which means you can only use small flathead screws which eliminates using molly screws or similar to mount the strip to wallboard. If you mount the strip the only way the keyholes will let you, the Belkin name logo is upside-down. Not really important, just bad design.

The other little issue is that this power strip has those little plastic sliders over the outlets that are supposed to make it childproof. They are ridiculously flimsy, the first time I unplugged something the little piece of plastic broke and fell out.

I like the Belkin power strip and feel it just barely earns 4-stars because of the layout of the outlets, but I’m disappointed in the overall quality and the very poorly designed mounting keyholes.

La calidad de construcción es estupenda y no está de más que sea elegante y resistente. Lo compré y uso para conectar mi computadora y monitores y funciona muy bien. Hemos tenido varios apagones y ha hecho un gran trabajo protegiendo mi equipo.

Can’t complain, it’s plugged through my window and the light looks like a star when I sleep.