Philips VOIP841 PC-Free DECT 6.0 Wireless IP Phone
by Philips Accessories
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Our Price: $499.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $115.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Philips VOIP841 PC-Free DECT 6.0 Wireless IP Phone
Customer Review: Nice VoIP phone, just a couple of improvements needed
Summary: 4 Stars
The Philips VOIP8411 phone is pretty good, I have been using Skype for over a year with no other backup TelCo, so I cannot say a thing about the "landline" features of this phone -I dont really care for them-
Setting the phone up was really easy. Signing in Skype was what took me the most time, because I had to figure out of to make CAPS/NUMS for the password. The rest was fine. The voice quality is as good as it gets. I had a DUALPhone for a year, and it was never as good as this one. I like being computer free, as I don't have to dedicate CPU cycles from one laptop or PC to the Skype line. In all, after over a month of use, I am happy with it.
Here are my two suggestions. The volume of the rings is pretty low at its highest setting. So if you happen to have a loud environment or a large house, you may miss calls cause you will not hear the phone if you are far from the set (unless you have multiple handsets). This is something Phillips should consider improving.
The other annoying thing is about the call waiting feature. The double beep or so when someone else is "calling" you, does not seem to go away when the awaiting party hangs. So, if you ignore the call from the other person while in an important conversation, you may expect to hear the nagging beep for the duration of the call. This is not a big deal for me, as I almost never get into this situation, and also, it may have a simple workaround.
I benefited from the forums where some other issues where addressed, such as making SkypeOut calls to a number out of your contact list, and making some config choices out of the defaults to make it more friendly for people who do not have a landline.
Customer Review: "System is starting up" message and freezes the phone
Summary: 2 Stars
ThisPhilips VOIP841 PC-Free DECT 6.0 Wireless IP Phone phone I got for around $105 from amazon. And I feel its not worth the price. I hope no one shells out $400 odd for this device.
Well, the features etc are discussed in all the reviews so I want to warn the buyer of a potential problem. I have connected the phone to a Netgear wireless router and configured it properly and I can make and receive calls just fine. Well, I am saying this to let you know my set up is fine. When the phone is left on for a while it freezes up with a message "System is starting up". It does not let you turn it off. The base reset button does not work. I had to switch of the base then remove the batteries from the handset and after a small prayer/ expletives (depends on how many attempts were made)start all of them again. Mostly this would work but there have been occasions it did not and I had to do this whole cycle 3 - 5 times. I have the latest firmware and the system is set to auto update.
This problem repeats itself every other day and I dont think resetting the power cycle is a solution to this bug.
I am not alone with this problem check skype forums,google with the error message and you will know its not a random defect. Philips has very poor software support for the phone. Its surprising such a pricey phone cannot have a better firmware update.
I wish i can send it back to amazon but its now more than 30 days..its been almost 5 months I am having this problem.
So you can gamble if you want. I wish I had seen a review that warned me about this.
Customer Review: Probably the best Skype phone around, but is that enough??
Summary: 4 Stars
Initially I was extremely happy with this phone. It was a breeze to setup with a very clear quick-start guide: I was up running, making great quality phone calls in no time.
However, the big drawback with this phone is the speed and reliability of the interface. As you may have guessed, the actual Skype software runs on the box that you plug into your router or modem. Everytime you want to view a Skype setting (such as view contacts, missed calls or call forwarding information) this information is retrieved by the handset from Skype via the pretty black box you connected to your network.
There is a delay of a few seconds while whatever infomation you requested is being "retrieved". That is somewhat irritating for young people with short attention spans such as myself.
What is more irritating though, is that requests sometimes fail! A number of times I've attempted to view my contact list so I can make a call and I keep receiving an error message saying the information is unavailable.
To me, that kind of message it unacceptable. It's a phone, it should just work! Perhaps there is some kind of interferance, or simply rebooting the main phone server will fix it, but at the moment I find it terribly frustrating.
When it works however, this is a very nice Skype phone. It looks pretty, the voice quality is great and the speaker phone works well. If you are a really heavy user you can also plug in a headset so your arm won't get tired holding the phone to your head.
Seeing what else is currently available, I would buy this phone again. But I think there is still much room for improvement in this market segment.
Customer Review: Excellent, replaced my regular phone
Summary: 5 Stars
After testing Skype itself (see other good reviews in this set on how Skype works) on a laptop for a month, we decided we liked it enough to get a Skype phone. After spending a lot of time comparing models on line, we got this one because it looked more like a regular phone (we don't need a Skype phone that travels) and so hoped it would be comfortable to use. In fact, its form is clearly derived from the Philips landline phone we had before.
The phone has surpassed expectations. Its is easy to use. Once you set up your default area code, you can dial any local number just as on a landline phone. We only use Skype now, so we set the default line to Skype - you don't have to choose Skype or landline. Unlike a regular phone, you can fill in your contacts (regular or Skype) in your on-line account. (There is a little software bug the web site tells you about - if you add more later, sign out and back into Skype to download the update).
We meant it mainly for day to day use (and we aren't home much), but it works well in heavier applications too. I did a three hour conference call recently. The speaker works well, you can of course mute, and so on. Very comfortable and functional.
So aside from not being able to call 911 (cell phone will do that) we can't find anything this thing can't do, and it has nicely replaced our landline and landline costs. If you get a $30/year (year, not month) subscription for the US, a phone number only costs $30/year. So that is $60/year versus our old costs of $40/month or $80/year. If you don't need a number, even less. Note you cannot port your landline number.
Highly recommended.
Customer Review: Expected more for the price we paid
Summary: 3 Stars
We purchased this product about a month ago and had high hopes for it, but sadly we are disappointed with it. The couple of nice things about this phone are 1) it allows you to do both your landline calls and your skype calls on the same phone, and 2) it has a nice color screen that is pretty easy to read. The parts that we are disappointed with are #1) the call quality is pretty mediocre at best... lots of echos, sometimes hard to hear what the other person is saying (because of quality, not volume), etc. This problem is for both the landline calls and the skype calls. If we have a call to make we much prefer our traditional phone to this one because of the quality difference. #2) the caller Id feature doesn't know if you have answered a call using a different phone. For example, if we receive a call and answer it on another phone it is recorded as a "missed call" on this phone. It is very annoying to have to click out of the "missed call" screen every time we want to use the phone (especially since we didn't miss the calls).
Other than those two problems the phone works fine. For the $170 that we paid for these phones (we bought an extra handset with the base) we expected at a very minimum clear land line calls. We previously used the dualPhone for this same purpose (skype and landline together) until the phone quit working, and for the $50 we paid for those we were much more satisfied (landline calls were clear ad skype calls were clearer than with this phone).
I don't know if there is something better out there, but I would think twice about spending $170 on a phone that can't even give you clear land-line calls.