[Asterisk-Users] Netweb 401 short review

[snacktime]

Thought I would share my opinions on the Netweb 401 SIP/IAX phone from
eezeephone.com.

Before getting into the product info, I have to say that this was the
first vendor I purchased voip equipment from that didn't totally rip
me off on shipping.  I ordered the product on a Thursday I believe and
it got to me the next Monday from all the way across the US.  Most
other vendors use the cheapest UPS shipping they can get and it takes
a week and a half to get to you, and on top of that they charge you 4
times what it costs them to ship.


The phone itself is not bad looking.  The handset has a strange cradle
but it works.  It has a speakerphone that seems to work ok with decent
quality, but when trying to use it to record some voice prompts
through asterisk I would get a loud buzz where there should have been
silence on the playback.  A minor thing but worth mentioning.

The phone is cheap, but you get what you pay for.  In this case you
pay the premium to get IAX2, and sacrifice some quality in the phone
itself.

When it comes to setting up and programming the phone, it's easy
enough for someone who plays with a lot of gadgets, but forget about
an ordinary person being able to configure this phone.  It also has
separate firmware for SIP and IAX.  You can't have both active at the
same time.

It does include some type of dialplan and basic forward on busy/no
answer, etc..  The documentation for these features as far as I can
tell is only available from the chipmakers website, and is incomplete.
 Fairly worthless IMO.  It has a phone number address book and speed
dial which does work and wasn't too difficult to figure out, although
again no documentation that I could find.  One thing it doesn't have
is a MWI.

Overall it's ok priced for being one of the first IAX phones out on
the market, but it's got a long ways to go before it even comes close
in features and usability to something like the sipura.  At this
point, frankly the ability to do IAX isn't worth the other things you
sacrifice with this phone.

Chris