I, too, prefer a higher wattage soldering iron that is temperature-controlled. It is much better to have more power available than too little. Again, the key is "temperature-controlled". I can put very fine tips into my 40-Watt irons if need be. But again, I prefer to use the largest tip possible, because I get faster heat transfer. A too-small tip impedes heat flow, and that means roasting on things for too long, which is hard on components and boards.
True UPSs are supposed to have their inverters On-Line at all time. That's the only way the power can truly be "uninterrupted". Except for one exception I've found, and I can't even say they're available anymore.
A place called "Best Power" used to make UPSs that employed a ferroresonant transformer to provide voltage regulation to the load most of the time, and then a Backup Power system that switched on, in synch with the mains voltage, in the event of a power failure or anomaly beyond what the ferroresonant transformer can handle. The switchover was fast enough, and synchronized, such that there was no interruption or discontinuity in the output waveform. Thus, you got the efficiency of a back-up power unit and the true uninterrupted waveform to the load of a true UPS.
And as for UPSs providing good protection, I remember back in the early 1980s having to repair three 2.2KW Sola UPSs that all failed from a power surge at a customer's location. It was super-ironic that they didn't have as much as an MOV across their input lines!
These were big bruisers. They weighed around 150 lbs with their battery packs in place.
They all had fried power transistors, and these were amazing devices. They were in TO-3 cans, but had leads that looked like12 Gauge! 600V, 50 Amp rated bipolar darlingtons. They were complimentary, like the output of a big class A-B audio amp. I replaced 30 or 40 of them in those three units.
I also installed big (V130HE150) MOVs in the front ends, and we never had another failure in any of them.
So the amazing and ironic thing was how the manufacturer had failed to take a simple step, adding just one cheap component, to protect a device whose job it was to protect other devices from crappy power!
And these were UPSs, which, at the time, cost several thousand dollars apiece! No excuse, IMO.
As for real on-line backup, the phone company used to be fantastic about that. They simply had 48V banks of "glass-jar" lead-calcium batteries that directly sourced the network's power. Simple and extremely reliable. And they charged these batteries properly, providing periodic equalization charges, either manually or automatically. This is something I don't see in any of the standard inexpensive backup power systems that we are sold as consumers. They, Ma Bell, got lives of 50 to 100 years from their battery cells.
Where I worked back then, we got 15 to 20 year lives from sealed lead acids because we made our own power supplies, and simply paid proper attention to charge voltage. Most home and office UPSs do well to get 3 years of life from those same batteries because they just don't care, I guess. It's not that hard to properly charge lead acids. But you almost never see it done. I think it's done poorly on purpose to sell new batteries and entire backup supplies.