Power outages aren’t exactly the kind of thing you can schedule. The best you can do is be prepared. If you live in an area that’s prone to extreme weather or regular power surges, that often starts with a home generator to back up your lights and large appliances, but your tech may require a smaller, more technical solution. An uninterruptible power supply—“UPS” for short—is a small deskside backup battery that provides immediate power to sensitive tech when the power goes down, keeping computers and networking devices up and running so you can save your work and maybe get a message or two out before safely shutting down. Most, including the affordable Amazon Basics line of UPSs, double as surge protectors to keep excess voltage from frying your devices.

The UPS is a fairly specialized home office accessory and, as a result, many options out there feel very technical, offering robust emergency protection with a lot of customization and control for a premium price. Amazon’s version, including the Amazon Basics 600VA UPS Battery Backup I tested, is a more simple, but practical option. It looks like your run-of-the-mill surge protector, and provides enough power to keep basic office electronics like a laptop and your WiFi router going for long enough to shut down without losing important files or, worse, damaging your gear. For anyone looking for a simple safeguard against brief outages, power fluctuations, and accidental shutdowns, this UPS accomplishes what it needs to.

Plug and Play Protection

The eight-outlet UPS I tried is fairly compact—it’s only 10.5 by 6 by 3 inches. It’s a lot thicker than a similarly sized surge protector, but it’ll fit fine under a desk or behind an entertainment center if you want to protect your home theater, rather than a PC setup.

Of the eight outlets on the box, four are backed up by the battery and four are surge-protected only. That’s a fairly typical arrangement for a UPS of this size, since most units often split their outlets, and it gives most home office users enough capacity to prioritize essentials while still protecting less critical electronics from power surges.

Given the casual, budget-conscious offering, the most important thing here is that this thing is easy to use. All you need to do is plug it in and let the battery charge overnight, and it will be ready to kick in the moment you need it.

A Basic Battery Backup Is Fine for Office Tech

This version of Amazon Basics UPS is rated at 600 volt-amperes (VA) or 360 watts (W) at full load. At full load, it can only keep your devices running for about two minutes, but that would require a full set of power-guzzling tech. In practice, it can power the core components of your work-from-home setup—your laptop, a router, and maybe an external hard drive for at least 30 minutes, and could likely keep a combined cluster of devices on for just long enough to save and shut down.

For example, I connected my 70-watt MacBook Air charger and had it draw power until the UPS battery died. After 45 minutes, the UPS was still going strong. That’s plenty of time to save all your work, prepare some emails about your downtime, and then shut down safely. Similarly, I tried running down the battery using my Netgear modem and Asus router, which only draw 25 watts combined: I didn’t fully run down the battery during this trial, but the UPS did supply power to the devices for over an hour.

Ultimately, your runtime will vary, depending on what devices you plug in. I would recommend doing a dry run in advance so you know what to expect. In general, with four devices plugged in, the battery will likely last less than 10 minutes.

But It’s Not for Everyone

Like many budget-friendly UPS systems, the Amazon Basics model uses a simulated sine wave output when operating on battery power, which means that the electricity it produces during an outage approximates the smooth waveform supplied by your home’s electrical system, rather than replicating it exactly. More expensive UPS units use pure sine wave output, which matches utility power more closely.

For equipment like laptops, monitors, modems, and routers, the difference won’t matter, because these electronics typically work without issue on simulated sine wave power. If you’re backing up a high-end gaming PC or network-attached storage (NAS), you should probably look for a pure sine wave UPS.

Bottom line: This is a basic option. It’s much less expensive than what you’re going to get from dedicated UPS brands like CyberPower and APC, and there’s a reason why. That doesn’t mean it can’t be helpful, but it’s worth acknowledging its limitations.

Who Should Buy an Amazon Basics UPS Battery Backup?

The Amazon Basics UPS battery backups offer simple protection for home offices and workspaces. They’re more than enough to support the tech you need most. You get that little bit of extra security that could come in handy if you need to work at home through a storm.

It’s worth pointing out that Amazon makes a whole line of UPS backups of varying sizes and capacities, from an even smaller 400-VA, six-outlet surge protector to a fairly beefy 1,500-VA, 10-outlet option. Though the power scales, you can imagine that most of these will similarly offer short-term protection for the essentials. For more power-hungry and/or sensitive electronics—TVs, gaming gear, etc.—you should consider looking at options from dedicated tech power brands, including our recommendations.

The Amazon Basics UPS is less of a backup battery and more of an upgrade over your standard surge protector for homes and offices that lose power from time to time. You probably won’t think about it most days, but when a storm comes through and your WiFi stays on long enough to save your work, you’ll be glad you have it.