Something Old, Something (Not So) New
Shown above is a piece of ground strip, which is practically the same flappy style as the dollar-store units. Below that, you can see a sample of the live and neutral metal strips employing the more durable bent fingers contact style instead of the usual strip with offset punched slots.
I was really expecting round finger-style ground strips similar to what I saw in my APC BX1000 tear-down from last summer.
Spot-On Welding
This is an example of direct bare copper to metal strip contact. There's no tinning or plating on the wires, just pressure to tightly pack all the strands together and a high-current pulse to fuse them in place without causing much visible damage or melting. All of the wires are stripped two or three millimeters too long, though.
Spilling Monster's Guts
Sliced open, the HT800G spilled more goodies than most of the units we've torn apart in the past.
Aside from our bad luck getting a unit with pierced wire, which could conceivably happen to any manufacturer, my main critiques of Monster's HT800G are its unbranded MOVs and the use of flappy ground strips.
The best impressions came from the plug, the cord and the outlets' insertion force. Whatever you plug into them is not going to come out without external assistance.
If you happen to be shopping for a new power strip around the $40 mark and can get the HT800G for close to its $45 street price (or less), it's definitely worth considering. Not so much at its $90 MSRP, though.
