[Asterisk-Users] Phone choices....opinion request Polycom vs Cisco

[Rich Adamson]

> I am struggling with hardware choices to get started with. My options are  
> narrowed down to SIP phones - Polycom IP500, IP600 and Cisco 7940G.
> 
> of importance is:
> 
> - functionality / integration with asterisk
> - headset functionality and use
> - voice quality
> - build quality
> 
> Is there much of a difference between Polycom and Cisco? Scanning the group 
> it looks like there may be slightly  more issues with Polycom but I don't 
> know how they stack up on the integration with Asterisk and future 
> flexability.
> 
> Any recommendations appreciated.

Each of the phones noted above are high quality business-class phones. 
You should be able to find user reviews on the wiki.

The Polycom phones are a little bit more difficult to configure initially,
but its a learning curve problem not a hardware/software problem.
Polycom tends to use xml formated config files that are ftp'ed from
your server after each phone reboot, so having a convenient way to view
and edit those xml files will make your life easier.

The Cisco sip phones use text files that are tftp'ed after each reboot
to do the same thing, and those text files can easily be viewed/edited
with any text editor. Far fewer options compared to Polycom, but the
phones interoperate with asterisk just fine.

The Polycom config files give you many more parameters to change/control
compared to the Cisco. However, those added parameters is what makes the
learning curve a little longer.

The IP600 is probably the best choice from the above list since it
tends to have everything that you could possibly want in a single
phone including power over ethernet. The only down-side that I'm aware
of is that you "must" obtain polycom's firmware from a reseller as
polycom does not make those available to you on their web site. Not
a big deal, but you need to be aware of it.