AudioQuest PowerQuest 2 power conditioner. You get what you pay for.

I do not normally review audio equipment on this blog, but a recent acquisition of a new power conditioner prompted me to inform others of my experience with it.

​I was excited when AudioQuest announced this unit and its bigger brother, the PowerQuest 3, both of which are affordable alternatives to their big-boy power conditioners in the Niagara line. But, alas, as with everything, you get what you pay for.

This unit ($200) is all plastic, as to be expected at this price point. But it comes with its own, captive power cord. On one hand, this saves you the expense of buying an after-market cord; but on the other, also prevents you from upgrading it to something better. I was pleased though to find it was a custom-made AudioQuest cord with a 3x14 awg rating. That's pretty impressive on such a relatively inexpensive unit, and should provide the necessary current for a complete home theater system. It has an on/off switch and a reset button, which protects the unit in the event it is tripped by an actual surge/spike.

What makes this unit so enticing is that it offers: 
1) a high current outlet, which is very useful for those with a high output amp or receiver; and 
2) a special plug specifically filtered for a high-def (4K) television. The owner's pamphlet states this plug may be beneficial for blu-ray players as well. I did not try it with a disc player, but it seemed to work wonders for the crispness of picture and richness of colors on my 55" Samsung TV.

This unit did not fare nearly as well on sound, though. Right out of the box, it was ill-focused, dark, muddy and dynamically polite, which can be expected from a brand new unit. And, sure enough, after several days of constant use, it began to open up and dynamics and focus improved considerably. Unfortunately, what began as a rather dark sonic character eventually lightened up too far in the opposite direction. The resultant sonic palette was rather gray and washed out, lacking warmth and richness. It was refined and had a pleasant perspective (not too forward, not too laid back), but lacked fullness, color and real power. I attribute this to its inherently lean sound. Deep bass was tight but light. This overall sound did not benefit full symphony orchestra recordings or movies.

Worst of all, however, I eventually began hearing distortion here and there on a variety of movies and CDs, which worsened as time went on. Combined with its thin sound, I began to suspect something was amiss. I removed the unit and upon close examination, I discovered a 1" long, deep cut in its power cord, which went all the way through to the wires inside. I do not know how detrimental this defect was to its overall sound, but I can state with almost certainty it was causing the distortion I was hearing (which went away completely once I removed this unit).​

It's disheartening to realize that even a reputable company like AudioQuest can fail at quality control. This is a serious defect which is, frankly, unacceptable. I returned the unit back to Amazon and received a full refund. I may consider AudioQuest's new Niagara 1200 power conditioner, coming in April, 2019. For $995, I expect it would be a significantly better-sounding unit. However, I now have reservations about AudioQuest, particularly as it is well known that much of their product offering is made in China these days. And their quality control can suffer as a result.
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Incidentally, the only difference between this unit and its more expensive sibling, the PowerQuest 3 ($300), is the number of outlets. The "3" offers two high current and two HD TV plugs, along with the identical 4 standard plugs. 

UPDATE 03/30/19 - AudioQuest commented on my review - as posted on Amazon.com - and offered sincere regrets for the problem I encountered. More importantly, they also kindly pointed out there is a significant difference between the PowerQuest 2 and PowerQuest 3, other than just the additional plugs I noted above. On the 4 standard plugs, the PQ3 provides "Ultra-Linear" filtering, while the PQ2 offers just "Linear" filtering. Not knowing what this means, I did a little research and found that "Ultra Linear" provides both Common-Mode AND Differential-Mode filters, while "Linear" is just the Differential-mode circuit. I cannot say how much this additional filtering will affect the overall sound, but theoretically, the PQ3 should offer better performance than the 2. And the extra circuit accounts in large part for the additional $100 in cost.