Really nice phone

I bought this for my mother who never remembers to charge her cell phone. I set up her cell to forward to a Google Voice number when her device is "unavailable," so when the phone dies, this phone rings. It has built-in Wi-Fi, so it works anywhere that there is signal and a power outlet.For $50, it is a great value.It has lots of features which can be configured intuitively; I did not use a manual the entire time I worked to configure this phone, although, I use an obihai200 at home, which I configured years ago, so I had some previous experience with setup. If you are technologically illiterate, I would recommend that you find someone who is savvy to help you set one of these up OR look up some videos on Youtube.Pros:-You can make free domestic calls using Google Voice. You can also configure the phone with other providers.-The sound on this is fantastic.-Speakerphone works well-It has many mounting and positioning options (wall, flat, tilted almost vertical and tilted almost flat) which were easy to configure.-There is a set of 6 buttons on both sides of the screen which you can assign to different lines OR you can set up for speed dialing numbers - I set my mom's up for speed dialing the people she speaks with the most.-Build quality feels on par with your typical professional grade plastic office phone.-There is a lot of room for customization on this thing-You can easily set up multiple lines on it.-There is a port on the back for using a headset, like the ones they use in a call center - could be nice if you are on the phone a lot.-It supports Wifi (mentioned above) and Ethernet, so you have plenty of connectivity options. It even supports power over ethernet! Wow!Cons:-It doesn't have a whole lot of ringer options. The few that are there are lackluster and boring, but I guess it is fine because this is just a phone. There are two USB ports on the back and I assume you could use them to put additional ringers on the device.-Phonebook setup pulls ALL of your contacts over Bluetooth from your phone. ALL of them. There isn't an easy way to mark a bunch of contacts to be imported; I also didn't find a way to select multiple contacts to be deleted - I had to delete them individually after the import. This made setting up the phone book tedious.-The screen is bright blue and stays on. There is a screensaver option, but I didn't mess with that - I'm just complaining because the bright blue screen is still BRIGHT BLUE at night. I'll see if the screensaver helps.-The buttons on the keypad don't light up. Easy to miss these in the dark, especially when looking at the bright blue screen makes it even harder to see the buttons in the dark. It became an issue when the GV call screener required my mom to press 1 to accept the call - I had to turn this off because she kept having a hard time finding the 1.-There is not a whole lot of information online about this specific model (OBi2182). Not many Youtube vids, not much from the manufacturer, not much at all. I still like it, but if you have an issue, I wouldn't know what to look up first.-The Obihai Obi200 series devices are being discontinued soon, and that worries me, because it makes me wonder what the long-term support of this product will be, since the Obi200 seems to be a popular device and they are planning to flat out drop it. I'd say it was the gateway drug for me to buy this product though, because the Obi200 is fantastic. The phone is Polycom branded, so perhaps the unexplained relationship between Polycom and Obihai is the issue.-You cannot plug in another phone (or plug this into an empty outlet on your house and use this the way the Obi200 would be used to connect multiple phones to a VIOP service) and use this phone as a switch - I was hoping that the auxiliary port was for this, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would be a killer feature, because it would replace the need for the soon to be obsolete Obi200 with a very capable host phone. I only bring this up because the devices are closely related and it seems like the capability could be easily implemented.Things you should know:-You have to pay extra (to a service provider) for 911 support on a VOIP phone - this is something you understand before you find yourself in an emergency needing to call 911 but not being able to because you didn't know. Now you know.-The phone is wide. It takes up about the same amount of space as an igloo playmate lunchbox. This makes the layout of the buttons nice and comfortable, however, it doesn't do you any favors if you don't have the space.Edit:December 6, 2023I still like this product and we still use it consistently without any issues.

Rarely do I review items on Amazon. However, due to the extreme failure of this device, lack of help from Polycom and no support from the merchant I feel I need to detail my saga.I purchased this device in July of 2021. Initially, it was a great device. In January of 2022, the handset stopped working. Since it was still under the 1-year warranty from Polycom, I reached out to their technical support people. I was on hold for 47 minutes before finally being connected to a person. After discussing the issue with the technical support person for a few minutes and giving him my phone number in case we were disconnected, he put me on hold. When I had been on hold for about 5 minutes the line disconnected. So, I waited about 15 minutes for him to call me back. That rep never called me back. After waiting for about 15 minutes I called Polycom again from a different line just in case the rep from the first call returned my call. This time I was on hold for an hour and 12 minutes.Eventually, a rep finally answered the phone. He seemed to be very knowledgeable and worked towards a resolution quickly. He issued an RMA number and told me that the warehouse would be shipping a replacement device to me. Seven days later I got a reply to my case that said they wouldn't be replacing my device under warranty because it wasn't sold by Polycom, Obi or Amazon. This was not detailed anywhere in the product description, or anywhere easily found in the warranty.Will the merchant, Buying Done Right step up and fix the problem?

after a few week of owning. this device locked up after boot up, froze at the splash screen. froze at the logo screen. many power recycling without success. it was brought to my attention the smell of electrical burning 🔥. an electrical burning smell that was toxic, of a short so the device would have been giving of toxic fumes for some time. Cancerous toxic fumes.I would not recommend

We purchased this unit to replace a Polycom IP phone that had started spontaneously re-booting. Several findings to consider:1. Ease of configuration: whether you have SIP trunks, an IP PBX or use Google Voice, configuration is so easy with Obihai products, especially as compared to Polycom (who recently purchased Obihai) as to be almost beyond belief. Lesson learned: as soon as you plug in your unit, point your browser to obitalk.com and set up an account. The web client configurator is especially well thought out and pushes configuration changes instantaneously to your phone. When your phone acquires an IP address, you dial **5 [plus a four-digit number from obitalk.com] and, voila, it is registered with Obihai. The basic device configuration covers most setup requirements. If you need to geek out, there's an expert interface as well. Obihai offers a range of provisioning options to simplify a company-wide deployment, for example. Also, these phones reboot VERY quickly, so configuration changes are not a day-long exercise.2. 'Low level considerations': I recall assessing telephonic options some years back and a value-added reseller told me that, for most people, the 'low-level considerations' ended up trumping most other features on a phone. Thus audio clarity, volume, physical interface etc. typically outweigh other considerations. In this regard, I can report that the Obi2182 offers exceptional call quality and ease of use.3. Google voice: working with the GV API is no picnic. On the other hand, free US calls, no monthly charge for a number, and very inexpensive international calling are compelling positives. As near as I can tell, the Obihai products may be the only hardware option that is certified for GV interoperation. Kind of a big deal if you're a Google Voice/Hangouts user.3. Technical support: while this is usually assessed in terms of an absence of negatives, that metric does not do the team at Obihai justice. When I set up my unit, I had a nagging issue: mixing Google Voice mixed with IP PBX registrations on a SIP trunk Asterisk server caused the Google Voice registration to fail. Obihai tech support took over my phone, diagnosed the problem, and pushed a new firmware version. I have the sense that they wrote the new version specifically to solve this problem. Now THAT is some serious tech support.My one fervent hope is, since Polycom acquired Obihai, that they won't 'fix' it. Otherwise, if you're considering a new business class VOIP phone, look no further. There really is no way to improve on the Obihai experience.