VoIP Deal: Belkin Desktop Skype Phone for $50
mjgraves | November 5, 2009
This morning’s round of email includes sales flier from BUY.COM that shows they’re offering a Belkin Desktop Skype Phone for $50.00 after mail-in rebate. This is a real freestanding device that doesn’t require a computer running the Skype client. It’s not just a USB attached audio device like so many similar, but cheaper models. If you make a lot of use of Skype this could be a good deal. I’ve not used it myself, but that price is about 50% off the $99 list price.
Using Skype with such devices comes with some caveats. The Skype hardware developer program doesn’t support the use of any wideband codecs so the call quality will not be as good as the Skype soft client. Even so the unit appears to have a speakerphone capability, which is certainly convenient. I’d be curious to know how well it performs. If you buy one please let me know.
Update: This deal is even better than the listing I found for the device on Overstock.com, where it’s offered for $86.02.
Michael..can you recommend a generic SIP phone around the same price range.
I’ve never thought about that. No, I can’t. There’s nothing in the $50 range that I would recommend. The low-end Gigaset A580IP would be the cheapest thing that I’d recommend. That’s $90-ish for the base & one handset.
In truth, I’ve not tried a lot of really low-end hardware in a long time. I did a few years ago, but grew tired of the associated problems back then. From that point on I decided to keep to the high road when considering end-points.
The Aastra 6730i can be had for less than $70 these days. We run our business on it.
Interesting that a few years back people were questioning the viability of VoIP (ie. Vonage fiasco). Now everywhere you turn its widely accepted and has become very established.