A Holiday Family Gathering: The SoundPoints
mjgraves | January 2, 2010The holidays are a time for family gatherings. There are many facets to this reality. In the week leading up to the holidays I was provisioning a couple of new phones for coworkers, and a sample of the new Polycom SoundPoint IP335 arrived. So it was that there was a little gathering of the Polycom SoundPoint family on my bench; my own favorite the IP650, the IP450 that we generally use within Pixel Power, and the new low-end IP335 model. Big brother, middle sibling and Junior…all HDVoice capable.
As I get some user time on the IP335 I’ll be making some notes and sharing my thoughts. The question I need to answer myself is whether the IP3xx series represents the best value in the range? Or do we keep using the more costly IPx50 models as we add more extensions?
Very much looking forward to your impressions on the IP335! This blog has been a big help to me, especially the information on using m0n0wall’s traffic shaper for VoIP quality.
Could you recommend some cheapest HD SIP phone at the moment?
The absolute cheapest I can’t say. The cheapest I know of is the Gigaset A580IP, although some low-end Aastra models with their Hi-Q capability might be similarly priced. In the $130 range you have the Gigaset DE380IP, a couple of Yealink models and the Polycom IP335.
I think the Grandstream BudgeTone 200 may be the cheapest G.722 capable phone.
Recommending is another matter. I bought it and returned it after about a week. The LCD is only capable of displaying digits, not letters, so CallerID names can’t be seen. Also, if my memory serves, I found the user-interface was not particularly good; doing things like checking voicemail, and seeing missed calls seemed to require pressing too many buttons.
Beyond those criticisms, I wonder if the BudgeTone 200 would actually be able to support G.722 “acoustically”, that is to say, at the firmware level, G.722 is available, but in reality, the handset and/or speakerphone may not be up to spec. Perhaps an external headset is required for G.722.
Note that a list a wideband phones is given on voip-info.org: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/WideBandIPPhones
I’ve noted the problems with GS BudgeTone series phones at various times. While they support the G.722 codec from a signals perspective the hardware simply isn’t up to the task. You will not hear the full benefit of the improved call quality via the handset. As you suggest, some have noted that if you use the BT200 with a good wired headset then real wideband calling can be achieved.