Customer Reviews

Philips VOIP1511B/37 Skype Travel Phone

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

For years I have been using Skype with the VTP1000 phones offered at www.pcphoneline.com But I needed another usb phone in a hurry as a friend is going to Mexico next week and so I got this Phillips Travel Phone. I give it 4 stars. The sound quality is good but the volume does not go as high as my other skype phones. This has not caused us to have to repeat anything when talking, but it irritates me. Another thing that bothers me about this Phillips phone is there is no dial tone to it, unlike my other Skype phones. I am just used to that dial tone. The final thing is that when I make multiple international calls in a row but to different countries, I have to manually reset Skype on my laptop to the new country. My other phones do this automatically. For example, if I make a call to England, hang up and then call Mexico (country code 52), my other phones automatically sense from the 52 that the call is going to Mexico. No further action is needed on my part. But with this Phillips phone I have to get on the computer and reset the country from England to Mexico - as otherwise a number starting with 52 is not recognized by the phone. Not a big inconvenience, but an inconvenience nevertheless. I give 4 stars instead of 3 because this Phillips phone cost only half what my other phones cost. All things considered this Phillips phone is a good value at $30 or less.

This VOIP travel phone is not reliable. It will sometimes work fine, other times the software will crash. The sound is also poor.

I have four setups: a standard mic headset; a studio setup for radio interviews (mixer input/output connected to the computer); a standard Microsoft webcam; the Philips travel phone.

All work perfectly except the Philips phone, which can lock up, stop sending/receiving sound, or simply see its software crash. The phone's response time is slow (that is, pulling up the menu). I have returned to using the mic/headset for now.

Only had it for a day. Bought it to replace an IPEVO Free-1. Use it for work, international business ocnsultant. Skype's my office phone, so it rings wherever I am. Been using the Philips dual line VOIP phones at home for six months (love them, work great). Now pay $12 per month to Verizon to keep home number (so I dont have to give out my mobile number to people). So far, this Philips product matches the quality of the others I have. By the way, from the Philips website, this is the "new" version of their USB phones (there are older versions on Amazon as well).

I have bought the Philips VoIP151 on Amazon, and I will send it back tomorrow morning. It's a piece of crap, and so is the Amazon product description.

The phone is not compatible with a recent Skype version but can only deal with Skype 4.0.0.215 or older - unfortunately, the Amazon product description doesn't reveal this information, otherwise I would have stayed away from this product in the first place (as I should have).

I have installed the phone software according to the user manual on both of my computers, but the Philips VoIP151 and Skype (which I had to downgrade from the 226 to the 215 version...) simply don't communicate. The Skype software can't find the phone software, and even though I have downgraded the Skype software to the older version the Philips VoIP151 software is still telling me that it isn't compatible with anything more recent than the *.215 version.

I have then tried to uninstall the phone software (which requires the installation CD and can't be done through the "add/change software" application on your pc) in order to give re-installation a try, and - surprise surprise - the software can't be uninstalled. Every time I try I am getting the "the uninstallation was unsuccessful" announcement.

I highly recommend to stay away from this product unless you have tons of time to waste at your fingertips and are in dire need of a headache.

Tried to install this unit following instructions on a Dell Vostro 1500 running XP Pro. Skype was already installed and working well. The computer initially recognized the hardware when it was connected to USB port per installation CD, then hung up. Second install attempt failed to recognize hardware. Restart of computer failed to boot properly and had to roll back to an earlier Restore Point. Unit back in box and returning to vendor. As an expert level computer tech, I would not be messing with this product. You may be in for a nasty surprise and may need to re install your OS.

I bought this little Skype handset in December for a trip to India and was very pleased with it. Although a cheap headset would have worked just as well, I liked the idea of a handset that could be passed easily passed around and used by fellow travelers who could just use the keypad on the handset to dial instead of entering numbers on my netbook keyboard.

The phone is small, well-designed, sturdy and sounds as good as any headset I've used.

However, I was very disappointed when the latest release of Skype came out (NOT a beta!) and all of the handset functions were incompatible. There are no updated drivers on the Philips website, yet they've updated the product leaflet (as of 3/08/2009) describing it as "Skype Certified" and "Fully compatible with Skype."

I'm rolling back to an earlier version of Skype and expect it to work just fine. However, the joint failure of Skype and Philips to come out with drivers in a timely manner has taken my opinion down from four stars to two.

UPDATE 7/31/2009: Philips has been sporadically updating the drivers, but they lag behind Skype and there have been a couple of driver updates since my original post. Most recently, in late July 2009, I submitted a somewhat angry comment via the Philips support website and was pleased to receive an email indicating that new drivers had been uploaded to the site as a result.

The Philips VOIP1511B Skype travel phone is good. Install was easy. Just follow the directions. The phone and its software works well with even the most recent version of Skype. Call quality was good from both ends of the conversation.

The phone itself is decent. It looks and feels like a mid-1990s mobile / cell phone if you like that retro look. I really like how the USB cable folds to be hidden and the included carrying case is of quality.

For $20-$25, it's a good deal.

Warning: Despite of what description says this phone is NOT MAC Compatible. I have to do a research on the Phillips Web site, because I want the phone to use it on my desktop and portable Mac's, the Philips site says is not Macintosh Compatible... 1 star (to Amazon, not the product) for an inaccurate description.

Product is for an outdated Skype program (3.5) which I found out when I called Phillips because the phone was not working properly. I was then informed by the "helpful" agent that most of their customers call first before ordering the phone. Gee. Helpful. NOT! Look, I was calling from Istanbul, Turkey and it is difficult to contact folks during the USA working hours unless it is the wee hours of the am in Turkey. Trust me this snide comment did not improve my mood. The phone does not work properly on my laptop. I tried it at work and it seemed fine but who can I call...it is 1am to 2am in the states!

I feel robbed, to say the least. Why am I so angry? Well I was told to remove the updated version of Skype and download the 3.5. I was told I would not lose my history. Guess what? I can't find it and if it is on my laptop, where is it. Right now it is gone and I had voice mails saved from my sister who died in Oct 2009. Unless someone can help me find my history that I did not delete and click yes save it...my treasured history is gone and SKYPE AND PHILLIPS....I am royally pissed.

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This skype phone has been a pain from day one to keep working. The driver crashes frequintly on both of my laptops. One laptop has XP Home and the other is running Vista Basic. The problems I've had with it are different from the XP Home computer and the Vista one. This phone does not work with the most recent versions of Skype. I had to un-install Skype 4.1 and go back to version 3.8, which Phillips provide on the disk. Even though I downloaded a 175 mb update and rolled my Skype back, it is just as bad. On my Vista computer, the driver crashes when you try to use the buttons on the phone. On my XP computer, the driver will not start with windows, when I manually start the driver, it works fine for hours, but at some point I will realize that it is not running. The sound quality is really good on the XP laptop, not so much on the Vista machine. My laptop with Vista is brand new, this phone was one of the first things I set up, so the machine is not all messed up and my other XP machine has been used alot, software installed and un-installed ect.