I have a decent home theater and would hate to have to replace it. This is a case of why spend lots of money on a fancy surge protector when there’s cheap ones out there.

Last week, for no particular reason I heard a clicking sound on my Monster Power center. Everything shut down. In a minute or two it all came back on. Some of my adaptors and accessories are hooked into a cheap surge protector (cost about $20…seemed decent enough at the time). A few days later my iPod dock didn’t work. Tracing the problem, I found that the cheap surge protector had died.

That’s what happens to cheap protectors. They sacrifice the life of the protector during a surge. That is, if you are lucky they’ll stop working and cut off all power. If you are not lucky, only the surge protection dies and the outlets still works. You may not notice that the protected light on the strip has gone out. More common is that a surge kills the protection, and another surge hits right after the first. When the protection has been compromised, a surge will get straight through to your home theater components and TV and could damage or fry your electronics.

If anyone wonders why I support Monster’s power products, it’s because of their patented power protection that really works. If I’m going to use a surge protector, I want to know it’ll work.

Believe me, everything electronic that I plug in, is connected to surge protection. From computers to table top stereos. Having worked in an electronics store, I’ve experienced the damage from surges of power. And for my money, I want my expensive home theater to work for a long time to come.