Surge Protection: What to look for when buying Surge Protection

The problem comes when people buy a surge board with little to no understanding of what they should be looking for, or what specifications they should be looking at. In the paragraphs that follow we shall try to simplify this process and stop people from using what is currently the two standard criteria:

1. Brand name:
2. I know "Brand X" as I have their "Y product"(Speaker Cables, iPod Dock, etc.)
3. The Point of Sale Suggestion:
4. I need a surge board, this one is cheap, here at the counter handy, and they all look the same anyway

Firstly you need to look at its reaction time. This is how quickly the board will react when it detects a spike or surge. The Thor range have a reaction time of "less than 1 Nano Second", that is basically instantaneous.

The third item to look at is the Joules. This is the amount of power the board can absorb before it is no longer functioning as a surge protector. This is 6080 joules for the Thor A12 board. This means that the A12 will continue to protect your equipment till it absorbs 6080 joules, this can be in one big hit (lighting strike anyone?) or in multiple little hits over a number of years. Most surge boards on the market have no way of indicating when this limit have been reached, giving you the user no one of knowing if your equipment is still protected. Thor have corrected this by introducing a feature that stops the board itself from functioning once this limit has been reached. So with Thor, if the equipment plugged in still powers on then you are still protected.