Grandstream GXP-2000 Review

Grandstream GXP-2000 Review’, ‘

Overview
The GXP-2000 is Grandstream\’s first enterprise SIP phone. Priced in a very competitive range with excellent audio quality the GXP-2000 is a great fit for small businesses with the need for 2 – 8 phones. The ability to have 7 programmable buttons to be speed dials or Asterisk BLF are a plus for easy single button access to many of Asterisks features.

Value
Comparing the features of this phone within its price range only leaves you with the GXP-2000 as an option. Even comparing it to some phones that cost twice the price, they still may be lacking in features when compared to this phone. It has all the features (and more) a small business would want at a price a small business can afford.

Audio Quality
This is a difficult one. In our experience, the audio quality of this phone is fine. I\’ve heard better from much higher priced phones, but I have also heard a lot worse from equally priced and even higher priced phones. It\’s adequate and does it\’s job. Being that the audio quality really is the most important part of a phone, we\’re happy with it.

Look & Feel
Out of the box, I think it looks and feels nice. It\’s not extra heavy, but also not light giving you the feeling your talking on a toy. The button layout is nice and the layout is extremely well. If I could ask for anything, it would just be nicer buttons. Now, there is nothing wrong with the current buttons.. They just lack.. appeal. Maybe it\’s the color. But, the nice big tilt display is great and th e on screen navigation is as expected.

Features
It pretty much has everything you could ask for in an enterprise level phone. Buttons for transfer, conference, voice-mail, and hold. Take the fact that you can program the other 7 buttons to be whatever you want, be it paging, parking, etc.. what more could you want? The only complaint I\’ve heard is that you have to clear the missed call log. Of course you do.. What kind of complaint is that? The only real complaint is the BLF lights.. I\’m not really a fan of that feature anyway, but if you want to use them, be prepared to deal with “lost” lamps. If you have all 7 buttons configured, every time someone makes a call, Asterisk has to send out BLF info to every phone that has it setup. So, if you have 7 phones each setup as a BLF on each of the other phones, that creates a lot of useless traffic on your network. So, it\’s not uncommon for a phone to miss the information to turn off a lamp.

The one feature it is really missing is soft buttons under the dispay. But, having 7 programmable buttons makes up for it.

Software
Now, let\’s talk about how easy it is to setup a phone. The nice big display shows the phones IP address. Browsing to the phone gives you a nice web interface for configuring the phones 4 independent accounts. This means the phone has the ability to log into 4 different SIP accounts on one or more servers. But, keep in mind, the phone can actually handle 11 simultaneous calls at one time. In our case (and I would guess most), the phone is configured for a single SIP account. With lines 2 – 4 disabled on the web interface, you can press any of the line buttons to get a line out on the single SIP account. But, if you are speaking on the phone with the visual line 1 button and a call comes in, you will see line 2 light up. And if you have calls on all of 1 – 4 lines, you will see the light next to the top programmable button light it, and it has “become” a line. Very nice feature!