[Asterisk-Users] Review: AudioVox HP300-S

[Eric Wieling]

I've used the AudioVox HP300-S for a little while.  It's a
SIP/H.323 phone with power (power supply was included with mine)
and Ethernet ports on the back.  On the front is an LCD display,
the dial-pad, and various buttons such as hold, transfer, etc.  I
think it's about $140 or so.  I've only used the SIP firmware.

It supports Static IP, DHCP, and PPPoE for IP addressing.  It
supports G711 ulaw, G711 alaw, G723.1, and G729 codecs, but only
ONE can be selected.  It can be configured either via a web
interface or via the buttons and keypad on the phone.  It
supports at least SIP and H.323 (it may support other
protocols), but if you want to use a different protocol (switch
from SIP to H.323, for example) you have to sent it back and
AudioVox will do the cross-grade.  If you want to just update the
firmware you can do that via TFTP.

This device does NOT appear to support any kind of dial-plan
configuration and does not seem to support any kind of digit
timeout.  You have to press # at the end of any calls you dial. 
This alone would keep me from recommending this phone to anyone.

The cradle for the handset is too shallow and the handset falls
off the phone if you bump it or move it.

The phone displays the phone number of the phone on the LCD
display, HOWEVER, if your number is less than 11 digits the
display will show what appears to be whatever digits there were
previously to pad the displayed number to 11 digits.  Cosmetic,
but not very professional.

Each option on the web interface requires you to click on the
SET button next to the option, there is no way to make several
changes to a page on the web interface and then submit all the
changes on the page at once.  It does not support any VLAN
tagging.

As far as I can tell the phone ONLY supports INBAND DTMF.  I've
not been able to get any number I call to recognize the DTMF,
not external IVR systems nor the internal Asterisk application
VoiceMailMain.

This device does support setting the input gain and output gain
and allows you to set the receive buffer (small, medium, and
large).

There is no headset port on this phone.  The back panel has
cutouts for an Ethernet port to plug a PC into and an FXO port
for analog pass-thru.  I assume other models of this phone have
these options and they just use the same case.

Overall I think this phone sucks.  Technical support doesn't
seem to be great, but at least a real person responds to
e-mails.

The tech person I spoke to said there will be a new version of
the firmware available soon.  Here is the version information
for the unit I have.

Hardware Version: HP232 REV 0.1
Software Version: HD.00.A6
Bootrom Version: B.00.07
Release Date: 2002/DEV/12