GrandStream Budgetone 102 Review
GrandStream BudgetTone 102
GrandStream are making quite a name for themselves in the VoIP industry since their formation in 2002. The GrandStream range starts with the Budgetone 100 series (mass produced o?n a large scale in China), of which the 102 is the middle range model.?There is a 101 which is the same phone without a built-in?10 mb/s?switch. The top of this range 102D has a wider 16 character LCD rather than 12.
UK prices of the 102 are generally less than ?60 making it a great value entry model.
The package contains the phone, horn and cable, a CAT V cable for use with the in-built switch and a power supply.
The phone itself large in comparison to a normal phone, but the upside of that is it does dial nice and easy with those bigger buttons - something that can't be said about all those tiny mobile phones nowadays!
I have heard some complaints about the weight of the phone (being too light) but I didn't find that a problem - there are rubber feet o?n the base to stop it moving around o?n your desk. The horn is a nice size and weight.
To make life easy and test out the in-built switch at the same time I took the network lead out of my PC and plugged that into the phone then the supplied CAT V cable goes from phone back into the PC. The in-built switch is o?nly 10 mb/s which is the downside of connecting it this way, but with standard ADSL in real terms for me it o?nly slows down the odd large print job and saves me from having to run a much longer CAT V cable back to the main 100 mb/s switch.
Something else to take in account with this 'link thru' setup - powering down the phone means no networking o?n the PC. So I tend to just mute the ringer volume if I don't want to be disturbed (the Budgetone doesn't have a 'Do Not Disturb' feature as some of the software and higher end hardware phones do).
The phone obtains an IP address via DHCP (most home and office routers support this), which is easily looked up via the display menu system. A fixed IP can also be set via this phone menu. I do recommend setting the rest of the settings via the built-in web manager tool though.
The web admin tool can be reached by pointing your browser to the IP address of of the GrandStream, then logging-in with the standard password 'admin' (you can then change the password). o?nce logged in it gives a single large page with all phone settings. I won't discuss all the settings here in depth as that would be out of the scope of this review, but basically any thing the phone can do can be controlled from here. After changing a setting it needs to be confirmed by clicking the update button at the bottom of the page. Do remember that a lot of settings don't become active until the phone has been rebooted (via a reboot button).
The Grandstream can be setup with 1 SIP server and at the time of writing supports the following codecs: PCMU (G.711 Ulaw), PCMA (G.711 alaw), G.723.1, G.729A/B, G.728 and G.726-32 (in 6.3kbps or 5.3kbps).
Future firmware updates may include additional codecs.
In use
Once setup with your SIP provider you are ready to start using the phone. A square indicator o?n the top left of the display will show if your phone has properly registered with the provider (not seeing the indicator means it haven't registered, a blinking indicator means something wrong e.g. no network connection available).
You can pick up the horn (or press speakerphone) and dial the number you want to reach, then wait either 4 seconds for it to start dialing the number or hit the send button straight after dialing.
You can also pick up the horn and hit the 'called' or 'callers' buttons to browse through the list of incoming and last dialed numbers.
You can put someone o?n hold, transfer a call or and mute the microphone with a dedicated button push. The conference button doesn't seem to have any effect while in a call at the moment and I presume will be bought into use in a future firmware update.
The GrandStream supports a Message Waiting Indicator (which makes the display light flash when a message is waiting) and has a big message button for which the destination can be programmed via the web configuration tool. This can be used to dial straight into the voicemail server if that is available with your provider. You can also use it as a quick dial button for any destination you like.
Conclusion
The display can be a bit hard to read when the phone is not very close to you o?n the desk (would have been nice to be able to tilt the display).
The Ringer volume always going back to its loudest position when doing a reboot (would be nice to have a setting for this in the admin tool).
There is no audio feedback loop with the horn, which takes a little getting used to. o?n a normal landline phone, you hear your own voice back through the speaker, fed back from the mic. Not so with the GrandStream. It is noticeable, but you do get used to it fairly quickly.
And something I noticed later, but not really a problem for normal day use, is the fact that the GrandStream interferes with some of my radio equipment. I hear alot of interference when the phone is o?n.
But all in all the GrandStream is a nice phone especially at this price point where it has little competition. Audio quality is very good and it does have some additional features I haven't touched o?n here yet like STUN support and date & time auto settings via a timeserver etc. I'm sure that more features will be added in the future via firmware updates from GrandStream.
Added: Saturday, May 29, 2004
Reviewer: Tjardick
Score:
Related web link: Grandstream VoIP Phones
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