Why Buy Panamax Surge Protectors?

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Panamax has been around over 25 years and makes the BEST Surge Protectors.
Some reasons to buy Panamax:

WARRANTY
Panamax has the best warranty! It's really pretty simple if you read it. Panamax actually pays if damage ever does occur. Yes, we know of people who have been paid. Can you say that for other brands? Obviously, the idea is to never use the warranty. The only point is if it ever should happen, you really can collect. We've seen one web site that said that if a product was good, it shouldn't have a warranty. Huh? We would say if a product was good, why not have a warranty! Thinking of using your homeowners insurance instead? Good luck! Be sure and check with your insurance company as to the claims procedure for lightning damage. You will NOT believe how hard it will be and how much time it will take. I spent over 40 hours once trying to collect on lightning damage from homeowners insurance, and gave up, I was nowhere near done and it had cost me a good bit of money.

SurgeGate
Panamax surge protectors use SurgeGate technology. Competing brands claim to disconnect power if their surge rating is exceeded. Well, this is sort of true. What usually happens is their own circuitry is disconnected, but dangerous over-voltages can still get through. Not with Panamax. The Joule rating is unimportant with the SurgeGate circuit. Also, SurgeGate technology means the surge protector has a very long life, thus the lifetime warranty on most Panamax products. The surge protector is not set up to "sacrifice itself"as most of them are. If you are thinking series mode protector, think again, they use a coil, and coils pass voltage through during prolonged surges (Won't happen? Ever hear of an ice storm?). Finally, most any UPS will also die during a prolonged surge as they have no protection against it. SurgeGate technology keeps a Panamax surge protector working even during a prolonged surge. If you need power backup as well as surge protection, your best bet for your equipment is BOTH. Attach the UPS to the Panamax surge protector.
PHONE PROTECTION
Panamax uses SIDACtor devices along with Positive Temperature Coefficient Resistor. What does this really mean? SIDACtors are great for phone line protection, but can be overloaded. The PTCR acts as a automatic circuit breaker, it shuts down when a fault is detected, and reconnects when safe. Some other brands use SIDACtors, but use a fuse instead. This means when the fuse blows, you have to repair your surge protector and meanwhile you are not protected. Other brands use MOVs to protect the phone circuit, which do not work very well for phone lines. Also, do not be fooled into thinking that little phone company device hooked near your box outside the house (called a network interface device) will protect you against all surges. We've heard numerous reports of damage through the phone lines.
COAX PROTECTION
Competing brands usually use gas tubes to protect coax lines. Gas tubes have a high limiting voltage, around 90 volts DC, which lets too large a surge through to your equipment. In a typical surge, the slow response time causes a typical let through voltage of around 200-300 volts AC, way too high. Also, there is a huge difference between voltage requirements for satellite vs non-satellite coax. Satellite devices need around 27 volts, coax antenna, cable, etc. only need .7 volts. Other brands do not distinguish between the two! So, if you see the competition with ONE circuit for both satellite and cable, think about it carefully!
AllPath
Panamax has modular surge protection in the form of add-on AllPath modules for various product lines such as the Max8 series. What does this really mean to you? Say you buy a surge protector that protects a computer with a modem. A year later, you hook up a LAN at home. Now you have a LAN cable coming into your computer. With competing brands, you are out of luck. With Panamax, you add on a LAN AllPath module and you are protected!
SurgeGatePLUS. Some Panamax products also employ a SurgeGate PLUS circuit, such as the Max8 Coax. This means that you are protected against under-voltages as well as over-voltages. Does your competing brand offer this?
RESPONSE TIME
Panamax surge protectors have a response time of less than 1 nanosecond. This is critical in protecting from surges! If you have a UPS or are considering one, please note that most of them provide a 5 NS response time, this is NOT good. Also, a question to ask if you are considering a UPS is does it protect all the signal paths? Also, please be aware that UPSs add LOTS of noise to an audio/video system, you will greatly reduce the quality of your system with a UPS. See the SurgeGate section for further considerations.
PROTECTION and "Series Mode"
What about series mode protection? Series mode protection by itself is good, but has some weaknesses. One major weakness is that common mode impulses generated by in house surges or other types of surges are unprotected by a series mode surge protector, bet they didn't tell you that. Or, maybe they said they do not occur or are not large enough to cause any damage? If you believe this, email us and we will email you something that disproves this. The UL1449 spec they like to quote *requires* a common mode surge test, why would they have the test if they were not important? Also, see below as to why they still claim they pass UL1449 despite having no common mode protection. Panamax protects against common mode surges. Also, series mode proponents claim that other protectors have short lifetimes, while theirs does not (gee, they did tell you that). Since Panamax has a lifetime warranty on most of their surge protectors, they would not be in business if this is the case! With 7 million sold, most with lifetime warranties, over 25 years, do the math and figure how many per day would be replaced if that were the case, you'll find it is many thousands, would they still be in business? Make sense? The manufacturer of the components used for AC protection rate their product as having a lifetime of 500 years if you had a direct hit by lightning on your power feed once per year (IEEE 500 amp test pulse). Or, you could easily handle 100,000 100 amp surges.

Another claim is that Panamax shunts all surges to ground. Not so! Surges are diverted to neutral and ground, making all 3 phases have the same potential, meaning no downstream damage, unlike the claims (gee, they forgot that part also). Also, they claim that mode 2 protectors inflate by massive factors the ground reference, we can direct you to sources in the power industry that says this can happen without *any* mode 2 protector, the case is vastly overstated, and since they do not protected against those types of surges... Oh, and while they say "mode 2"protection is bad, they forget to mention they really do NOT pass the UL1449 rating as that requires passing the mode 2 protection test, it is part of the UL1449 spec. They get out of it by not having ANY protection except for hot-neutral, and therefore there is nothing to test, all semantics. Which means other types of surges are *completely* unprotected. We can direct you to web sites that discuss what happens with phone lines and surge protection in such a scenario. Ask them what happens during a prolonged surge, as in 10 seconds, or minutes say during an ice storm. Also, if the surge exceeds their rated capacity, any coil design gets overloaded, and overloaded coils pass through the voltage. If they tell you you cannot possibly get a surge in excess of 6,000 volts, we can provide information on that as well. Finally, most of the ones we've seen do NOT guarantee they will protect your system, Panamax does! Now why would that be?