Handset manufacturer advice

[Lee Cramman]

First off, apologies - I know the "Which are the best handsets" question is asked a fair bit on here but I wanted to ask a slight variation on that theme.

It's been a while since I did a new deployment of 3CX but the time has come. I've only deployed at quite small scale before (single site, 30-40 endpoints) but while this deployment is meant to start small, I've been told it is likely to need to scale to 20+ sites and 400+ endpoints.

For simplicity, I want to pick a handset manufacturer and stick with them but I feel like I'm a little out of touch with what is current, feature rich and likely to receive 3CX support for the longer term.

I've previously deployed Yealink (reliable but a bit dull), some Fanvill (a few behavioural quirks but I liked the handsets) and Grandstream (reliable, dull, cheap feeling). Out of that bunch I would probably pick Yealink as the best because they never seem to let me down but my experience is with older phones and I've not worked with any other make of kit.

So, please hit me with your advice about manufacturers I should look at closely at for a long-term relationship or maybe some that I haven't tried before that I shouldn't overlook.

 

[cobaltit]

Well firstly, your relationship (at least at that count) isn't going to be with the manufacturer but rather with the distributor unless you are shopping at Amazon. Secondly, this is really still the same question. The best handsets identified in the other threads are still the best unless your primary criteria is price. General consensus (as seen in the other threads) is this:

- 1st place is Yealink
- 2nd place is probably Snom. They are one of the longest supported brands and they are very well built. They have their own little design quirks (not everyone likes the magnetic hook switch for example). This may change with the Vtech acquisition though.
- 3rd would probably be a tie between Grandstream and Fanvil although Fanvil increased their warranty to 2 years now and I would give them the reliability edge as well although that may just be there are more Grandstream handsets than Fanvil deployed.

Honorable mention goes out to Polycom VVX xx1 series. Recently added to the supported list they are definitely solid phones but not enough history out there.

 

[craigreilly]

Yealink if you have the extra $.
T48S is a very nice device.
And if you do not need a Color Screen - they are very reasonable. T42S

 

[Lee Cramman]

Cheers Guys. I think all roads lead to Yealink then - I've found them the easiest to support in the past.

I want to like Fanvil as I feel like you get a lot for your money with their handsets, but they make up less than 10% of the phones I've deployed and yet have accounted for probably a little under half of my handset related support issues. To their credit (and 3CX) those issues have decreased significantly with the last couple of firmware / template updates but once bitten...

@cobaltit I agree that the distributor is important but you do build up a relationship, at least with the manufacturers specific kit if not the manufacturer themselves. You get a feel for things like who releases good quality firmware updates and gets around to fixing bugs quickly.

Thanks for chipping in and helping to crystalise my thoughts.