[Asterisk-Users] What business IP phone to use

[Clint Sharp]

It's funny this thread has been coming up, because I've been testing out
phones at my office, and I just did a fairly intensive quality test on them.

1) Budgetones: Don't bother for a business setting.  The speaker phone is
basically useless (echo problems) and the handset is horrible.  If you
follow the suggestion on the Wiki to drill out the handset, it improves
things marginally, but not much.  Users talking to you will constantly
complain about you sound muffled.  It's think it's a frequency response
thing and not a volume thing, I think it's just getting lower than a
standard 8 khz sample out of the microphone, because it's so cheap.

2) GXP-2000: Not much better than the Budgetones, but at least the firmware
is still in active development.  Feature-wise it's pretty cool, but poor
firmware and poor handset hardware again make this a real problem for us.
We lost one handset to static electricity yesterday (which was fixed by
adding in a microphone from an old business set, which actually improved
that phone's quality).  The speakerphone is useless due to echo issues.
However, 4 line appearances is pretty cool for that price of phone, and
passthrough Ethernet at 100 mbs is pretty cool too.  Overall, I can't
recommend them, because while they sound slightly better than the
budgetones, I still get many complaints about muffled calls.

3) Polycom: Of the 4 phone brands we're actively using (not including the
Wifi phone which rarely gets used), this was the best until I got the Snom
in today.  The handset is of good quality.  I have an IP 301, but if the
cheapest phone is this good, I'd definitely get a 501 or 601 (and am
considering ordering some, although I may order Snom 320s instead).  Their
support policies do get on my nerves, I'd like to not have to worry about
what reseller I'm using, but it's a solid phone with solid features,
although the menus are cumbersome and I haven't gotten MWI to work on it
yet.

4) Snom 320: This is an excellent phone based off one days testing.  Minimal
configuration, professional looking web interface, and the best sound
quality of any of the phones I tested.  THe speakerphone works great, and
the handset quality is outstanding, and tested the best with my callers that
were listening to me through the PSTN.  I haven't upgraded firmware or
anything on this yet, so can't tell you there, but I can't see a compelling
reason to upgrade from whatever it shipped with that this point (i'm not
feature crazy, I only upgrade the firmware if basic features don't seem to
be working right).

Overall, stay away from the Grandstream's IMHO.  The audio quality issues
will drive you insane.  I'm hoping someone will come out with a sub-$100
phone that drops some features but fixes what should be the cheapest part of
the phone to manufacture, since they've been the same for nearly 50 years,
the handset.

Clint
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