End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

Win A Gigaset DX800A with HDVoice

Gigaset-DX800A-250Our friends at Gigaset are continuing to promote their wares to a broad audience, this time with a contest offering their DX800A desk phone. The DX800A has been available in Europe for a year or more, but has yet to be released in North America. It’s release is anticipated at the coming CES show in January 2012.

The Gigaset DX800A is a desk phone that incorporates a DECT base, supporting a number of cordless handsets. It’s HDVoice capable supporting G.722 audio over SIP.

It also supports the use of wideband audio over its built-in Bluetooth radio. I tried it using my Plantronics Voyager Pro UC while at CES last year.

This Post Has 13 Comments

  2. Hi
    Might be a tough question…..these seem to a great functionality..Bluetooth , dect etc.

    How does the voice quality, and potentially the speakerphone quality compare to a dedicated Polycom desk phone, like the ip550.

    Ie is the gigaset at “80%” of the polycom call quality and balanced out as an offering by its extra features.

    1. I can’t say as I’ve not tried one for more than a few minutes. The handset felt a little light compared to Polycom. Gigasets usually have a great price/performance mix, but sometimes with some software quirks.

  3. Great site! You have helped me tremendously with my questions on the Siemens Gigaset product line. The only thing bugging me was the lack of a wired handset option- but I searched through blogs and finally succombed after reading yours and placed an order for an SL78H (I wanted bluetooth but not an SIP base because already running VOIP through a Draytek router). LUCKILY I clicked on your Home page tab not 10 minutes later and low-and-behold the DX800A is here! I’ve now cancelled my Amazon order pending further review 🙂

    Question: it has bluetooth, but does that mean similar functionality as the SL785 and/or the Siemens Gigaset Bluetooth Gateway whereby you can sync one or two mobile phones to the base?

    Thanks, and thanks for saving a (possible) purchasing misstep.

    2. Never mind, I’ve had a chance to read through the specs…
      – 2 Simultaneous Bluetooth connections, i.e. via headset and mobile phone
      – Link2mobile
      – Register up to 5 mobile phones
      – Accept and make calls for mobile phone

      That’s pretty clear. I like this solution at least on paper- offers the ultimate in flexibility.

      1. Like you I’ve been through the specs. On paper it seems like a nice SOHO solution. I can confirm that it handles G.722 nicely over SIP, even when using a similarly capable BT headset. At $250 the price is right, given the flexibility of using Gigaset cordless handsets to expand the system.

        As far as the handsets go I still like the C61H and S79H. Both are capable of dialing by SIP URI from the contact list. Both support wired headsets, but not a cordless headset.

  4. Michael- this is Eric (under a different moniker since I couldn’t remember my old log-in details). Just wanted to update you on my experience so far for the DX800.
    So I ended up buying the DX800 and three S79Hs to complement… everything worked right out of the box- tested VOIP, tested the “fixed line” (which is actually Lingo) and tested bluetooth. All has worked well, which you would expect for a phone and brand of this caliber.
    Here are some gripes:
    – most serious gripe (and I wouldn’t have purchased if I had known) is that a handset can’t pickup another handsets ongoing call. This is extremely aggravating- imagine mom calls from Washington DC, the wife answers, tries to get you to pick up the call from where you are in the bedroom, but you can’t. You have to get yourself all the way back to the kitchen to grab the handset from your wife on which the call was originally received.
    – correlating to the above is the fact you can’t converse on a call with multiple handsets- after scouring the internet, I found that a feature called “barge-in” exists on older versions of gigaset, but not on the more recent versions. Not good!
    – menu and digit response is slow- more annoying than an actual service problem
    – the menu system is not very intuitive- you have to have the manual handy

    I’m still playing with the features- hopefully for the first two gripes I’m either mistaken or there’s a firmware upgrade that will fix them.
    Eric

    1. OK- my mistake- gripe #2 is all handled through the conferencing feature- you can call all internal handsets and the first one that picks up can be conferenced in… however as far as I can tell you can only do this once. So max two handsets for a shared call.
      Gripe #1, 3 and 4 are still valid I believe… including the deactivated “barge-in” feature.

    2. I’ve not had access to a DX800A to have any experience with the device. However, Gigaset makes products that are affordable and feature-rich, but often with annoying firmware quirks. The counter-intuitive menu is just one example of this.

      Do you find the S79H handsets to be more responsive than the DX800A menus?

  5. The menu response on the DX800A is noticeably faster. But for dialing there is still a hint of delay for the fixed line, and sometimes a much more pronounced delay when dialing via Bluetooth. I will say I really like the set-ups you can do on the phone display like have news scroll across and/or a current month calendar. Screen quality is super clear. One thing I’ve realized vs other products is that there are no descriptions underneath buttons, which contributes to its clean lines and sleek look. However this means you really have to read through the manual, or go through an extended discovery period before button use becomes habitual.
    In terms of core performance, so far the phones’ sound quality, especially the DX800A external speaker, is great. The range of the S79H handsets is excellent.

  6. I bought the DX800 specifically to work with Daylite CRM with the Foneconnector Plugin.  It also has a QuickSync software from Gigaset which is supposed to sync with my address book.  In both cases, the USA area code is a problem for local calls.  Daylite and Address Book have to include the area code because it syncs with my iphone.  I have tried every combination and there is no way to have either the software or the phone ignore the area code when dialing local calls, even though the phone does have a place to put the local area code.  A facility to deal with this problem has been standard in software such as this since the days of dial up modems.  Support from Gigaset is slow at best.  I was promised a callback in 30 minutes.  It has been 24 hours so far.

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