Review:

Belkin has been a longtime participant in the connectivity and power protection industry, but mostly on the computer side of things. With the growing market in the home theater arena, they have entered with a line of interconnects, power protection, as well as a device called Remote TV. This review will concentrate on their top of the line Power Console PF60.

Front Panel & Features

The design of the PF60 is very stylish and sleek. It’s smooth metallic face surrounds a lit LCD display that provides information about the incoming power, as well as how much current is currently being output. The main power button is located on the left-hand side of the unit and below the LCD display are three buttons: Remote, Bank and Dimmer. On the far right-hand side is an auxiliary outlet to use for temporary power.

The highlight of the front panel though is the LCD display that lets you know the PF60 is doing its job. The largest feature of this display lets you know the incoming voltage from your wall. The display also shows you how much current is currently being drawn for any of the six banks on the rear of the unit. By hitting the “Bank” button, you can switch between banks to find out what each individual bank is drawing, or all banks combined. In my tests, the most current I ever drew was 4.6 amps, or about 552 watts of electricity. Is this something you HAVE to know, not really, but it is nice to know how much power your system is consuming.

The PF60 offers the highest power filtration levels of any of the Power Consoles with what they call the Phase 6 PureFilter Circuitry. What this means is that there are six isolated filters that provide clean and clear power to each of your components that are hooked up to the PF60. Both the wiring and grounding are monitored out of each of the outlets and the LCD display will show a checkmark if all is good or an “x” if there is a problem. On the surge protection side of things, the PF60 offers protection up to 7114 Joules and 369,000 Amp Maximum Spike Amperage.

Another nice feature of the PF60 is the Remote AC Operation. This function allows you to turn your Power Console on and off via your preamplifier or receiver equipped with a switched AC power outlet. Using either the supplied AC power cord (120VAC), or DC input (3-30V), the PF60 will turn power the power on when power is needed. In order to use this function though, you must enable it by utilizing the “Remote” button located at the bottom of the LCD screen.

The last button on the front panel is the “Dimmer” button. There are six levels of dimness that are available for the backlit LCD, unfortunately, off isn’t one of them. This is my only gripe with the unit. In my particular case, the PF60 is located above my TV in a custom built AV rack, and I prefer all of my components lights to be off when watching movies.

Rear Panel

Looking at the rear of the PF60, you quickly realized that this isn’t your run of the mill surge protector. The first thing that caught my eye was the heavy-duty power cord. Belkin calls this their SD1000 HiCurrent Power Cord, which measures 12 feet in length terminated with a right angle plug. Situated above the beefy power cord are 8 coaxial inputs/outputs labeled cable, SAT, Antenna, and AUX. I hooked up my ATSC tuner through the PF60 and observed no noticeable loss in signal from my antenna feed. Also grouped in this area of the rear panel is one incoming phone line (RJ11) and two outgoing phone lines. Another nice feature is a Network In and Out (RJ45) for a media receiver or game console. Last, but not least in this area is a 15A Breaker as well as a grounding lug that is nestled next to the power cord. The PF60 isn't designed to handle current loads over 15 Amps or 1800 Watts, so if you exceed these amounts, that 15A breaker will come in handy to reset the unit.

As you would expect though, the power banks, 6 pairs in total, occupy the majority of the rear panel. Each bank is designed to offer you a specific filter need. The digital filter banks (Banks 01 and 02), have isolated digital filters that are optimized to clean and condition the power to all of your digital components. The digital filters also filter out noise created by digital components such as DVD players and isolate your digital components from connected video, audio and high-current audio components. Bank 03 contains the video components and the corresponding Video Filter, which is an isolated video filter that is optimized to clean and condition power for your video components like your TV or VCR. Banks 04 and 05 are the Audio components, which, you guessed it, isolate your audio components from all of your other components. Lastly, Bank 06, is the High-Current Audio Filter specifically designed to filter out AC line noise while delivering maximum current to power-hungry amplifiers and other high-current audio components.

What separates the PF60 from it’s younger brothers in the Belkin power conditioning line, is the ability to program each of the banks on the rear panel. Using the provided slide switches on the rear panel, you can program the outlets for switched or unswitched, and for delay or always on. Another nice feature, is you can program the length of delay (5, 10, or 15 seconds). It is a breeze to program the PF60 in this regard. Each power bank has two switches on the rear of the unit, one labeled “Always on” and the other labeled “Switched”, below that is the switch to determine whether your “Switched” units have “No Delay” or a “Delay”. Finally, there is the “Delay Time” switch that allows you to set the delay time previously mentioned of 5, 10 or 15 seconds. On the lower model PF40, each of the banks is either switched, or not switched and the switched outlets turn on after an 8 second delay.

Also available on the PF60 are two neat features, first is the Trigger Out function. This can be set by a toggle switch for “Delayed or Switched” via the rear panel and there is also a 12-volt DC OUT port that accepts a 1/8” mini plug. The trigger out function gives you the ability to control and external device equipped with a remote trigger such as a retractable screen when the Power Console is switched on. You can also use this to remotely control multiple power consoles if 13 outlets aren’t enough! The second neat feature of the PF60 is the Remote AC Operation. Instead of relying you physically turning on the PF60, the Remote AC operation allows you to turn your Power Console on and off via your preamplifier or receiver equipped with a switched AC power outlet. Once hooked up, when you turn on the receiver or preamplifier, the outlets on the Power Console that are programmed as “Switched” will be turned on immediately and the “Switched/Delayed” outlets will come on after a delay set by the “Delay Time Switch”. I found this feature quite useful with my cable box, since whether it is powered on or off, it draws .6 amps of power from the wall, which I find to be a waste of power.

Measured Performance

All of the listed features are nice, but the $749 question, does it work? Yes it does, very well in fact. I tested the PF60 with all of my AV equipment (Hitachi 57SWX20B RPTV, Onkyo 989 Receiver, Denon 3910 DVD Player, LG 3410-A HDTV STB, Comcast HDTV cable box, and a Sony VCR). With the voltage meter on the PF60, with everything powered off, it shows 121.9 volts from the wall. When everything is powered up with the receiver playing at reference levels, the volts drop to only 119.8 and as mentioned earlier, 4.6 amps are used. Power consumption aside though, the clean power provided by the PF60 was most noticeable in video material. When I first installed the PF60, I noticed that the brightness and contrast on my TV seemed to be a little high. Sure enough, when I popped in a calibration DVD, I noticed that each of the corresponding video levels were higher by 2 clicks in the service menu. I made the changes and as a test, unplugged the PF60 and re-hooked up everything the way I had it before, and low and behold, now my video levels were too dark. The PF60 showed me right there that it was doing its job and providing clean and stable power to all of my equipment.

Another test that I did was to plug a florescent light into the same outlet as the PF60, with the PF60 hooked up, I could not hear any “hum” from my speakers with no input source going to the receiver, but with the receivers volume at maximum. I then plugged my receiver directly into the same outlet as the florescent light, and did the same test. In this case, there was an audible “hum” that could be heard through the speakers, which indicated that noise was getting passed into the receiver through the wall outlet. Once again, the PF60 performs as advertised and filters out the line noise.

Conclusion

The PureAV PF60 delivers the goods as advertised. Other than the dimmer issue that I mentioned earlier, there really isn't anything to complain about. The PF60 boasts several top of the line features, namely the ability to program the switched outlets, a trigger out capability, beautiful looks and solid construction, as well as the ability to make your video look better, and your audio sound cleaner. There is peace of mind buying from Belkin as well, because they have a $500,000 equipment guarantee if there is a power surge on your connected equipment. The suggested retail price of the PF60 is $749, which for a top of the line product is a great price, but if you shop around the Internet, you should be able to buy it even cheaper than that.

Features:

• MSRP $749
• Package Contents
• User Manual
• Remote AC Control Cable
• Remote DC Control Cable
• FJ45 Ethernet Patch Cable
• RJ11 Phone Cable
• PureAV Coaxial Video Cable
• One sheet of PureAV cable labels
• One pair of rack-mount brackets and bag of assembly screws
• Dimensions: 17.25" W x 13.75" D x 4" H