Customer Reviews

Polycom SoundPoint IP 550 with Power Supply

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought several of these phones for employees at my office last year. They've worked very well as office phones and even as conference phones with up to three people sitting around the phone. The sound quality is very clear.

There are a few caveats that apply to all VoIP phones. First, before you can use a VoIP phone you must configure the VoIP server, in our case Asterisk, to associate the phone's MAC address with its phone extension. You can't expect to take the phone out of the package, plug it in, and start talking as you would with a regular phone.

Second, VoIP phones transmit voice over the packet-switched Internet instead of the circuit-switched network used by the "plain old telephone system" (POTS). Because packet-switched networks do not use a dedicated electrical circuit, there can be a variability in the amount of time it takes to transmit voice to or from a VoIP phone. This variability can cause temporary dropouts in voice. This quality-of-service issue is mitigated by the fact that this phone has a configurable and adaptable jitter buffer that can compensate for this variability by buffering up packets during times of delays and "shrinking" the buffer during times of silence.

Another consideration when buying Polycom phones is that firmware and configuration file updates are available only for customers of authorized Polycom resellers. You'll want to make sure you buy at least some Polycom phones from one of these resellers to keep your phones' software up to date. The firmware and configurations can be loaded from a TFTP server, so all you need to do is load the latest firmware and configuration files on the server, reboot the phones, and they all update automatically.

Great phone. Great sound quality. Fast boot time. Easy setup. Good solid VOIP four line phone.

Great Phone.. HD Voice sounds awesome.. Wide variety of CODEC support.. Great addition to an Asterisk system. Speaker phone sounds like someone is in the room with you and the other line cannot tell you are on speaker phone...

I've had one of these phones in another office and used it for about a year. This is my second unit and the sound quality continues to be great in both phones and I've no probems with either to date.

I paid a little more for this higher model to get the larger (more info) LCD display. The HD voice was very important to me as well, but I think there may be lower models that still have HD.

I would highly recommend this phone and will purchase more as I need them for our office.