Guess what. Almost all electronics have surge protection built into it. When you buy a power strip with a surge protector, you are adding additional surge protection.

 

Surge protection costs pennies to add. What costs more is the circuit that checks the surge protection to see if it is still working. If you have a power strip without a little light labeled “surge, " the strip either does not have surge protection or is so cheap that they leave the indicator out.

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You can never be sure the surge protection is still functioning. If a surge protector is hit with a voltage spike large enough, it will destroy to surge protector, but leave the power strip operational.

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So no light, assume no surge protection.

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There is another possible situation where a manufacturer installs a light, labeled “surge”, but it has no function other than to be on when the power strip is on.

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That is cheating of course, but I have seen this happen. Why spend the money to actually provide an indicating surge protector, when they can just fake it and charge the extra money anyway.

If it does not say “Surge Protection” on the device, it is just a power strip.

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Any SP with an indicator light is not to be believed. SPs are self destructive and the only way to tell if it is still usable is to visually inspect the MOV devices. That usually is not possible. I have a single outlet surge protector with an indicator on it that IS believable. The indicator is RED. The instructions say when it turns black throw it away. IF it turns black it will be because it is burnt to a crisp. What I am looking at is the MOV device itself.

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The MOV is like a cake. Put it in the oven for 1 hour it solidifies and becomes a cake. If you leave it in for 1/2 hour it won’t be a cake yet. If you leave it in for 75 minutes it will be burned and uneatable.

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A MOV rated at any Joules consumes 700 Joules surge. It is now half baked and can only consume another 700 Joules before it burns.

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An indicator cannot tell you that. After the first hit, you do not have 1400 Joules of protection.

The strip will most likely have words like “surge protection” printed on it or on a label. However, it will be lying. Power strips have nothing more than “spike suppression”. This will hopefully clamp a momentary high voltage spike to something that won’t damage equipment. The best ones will have a fuse that disconnects power when the spike occurs. Either way, after a spike occurs, you must buy a new power strip for continued protection against voltage spikes.

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For real surge protection, buy an Automatic Voltage Regulator.