After months of crystal-clear calls, with only a very rare pop, the range between first and last place was less than 0.5 percent, with three of the five tying for second. Still, only one can emerge victorious, and Polycom's SoundPoint IP 600 took our Editor's Choice award. We liked the SoundPoint's rich feature set, and we found it to be the easiest to use of all the phones tested.
Polycom, while best known for its videoconferencing products, also provides superior conference phones. Anyone who's ever used one can attest to the quality of the speakerphone. We were impressed with the phone's ease of use, and the features that made it possible to customize it for individual preferences. We also liked its diagnostic capabilities. This combination of features and functionality helped Polycom edge out Mitel, Siemens and Zultys for our Editor's Choice award.
The phone's layout is logical, intuitive and functional. When a call is received, the screen displays the phone's number, along with context-sensitive options for the four additional buttons along the bottom of the screen. And these options always seemed to make sense. For example, when receiving a call, the hold, transfer, end call and conference buttons were displayed. Those buttons were also available as hard keys on the phone, but we found ourselves taking our cues from the screen.
Six lighted buttons on the left of the screen can be used for call appearances or user-programmable speed-dials. It was a cinch to add numbers or even feature codes with labels that appeared on the display next to the corresponding buttons. The four cursor movement keys, along with an enter key (a check) and a delete key (an x) made this an intuitive process. For example, we were able to make a call pickup button that dialed *98, the number that the BroadSoft proxy server uses to pick up calls from phones in a call-pickup group. Eight additional keys are available for conference, transfer, redial and other functions.
Polycom had the best diagnostics, but we could only gather data locally, at the phone (all the phones were lacking in this area). Polycom also claimed to be able to send and receive instant messages, though the phone couldn't process messages sent from Microsoft clients.
SoundPoint IP 600, $435. Polycom, (800) POLYCOM, (925)924-6000. www.polycom.com
Mitel is one of only two legacy PBX vendors that participated in our tests (Siemens is the other). Mitel's 5055 is a no-nonsense business-class phone, and it might have scored better if it had some of the features that the company plans to add later this year, such as better diagnostic capabilities.
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