Dualphone 3088 review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 15 Aug 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Alex Watson

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

ExpertReviews Award

The Dualphone 3088's main claim to fame is that it doesn't require a PC to run.

With its red front LED, the sleek base station looks a little like the talking car from Knight Rider. You connect this unit to your internet router and your phone line, and it then connects to the Skype service using your internet connection. The wireless handset has its own charging station that you can place somewhere convenient.

The Dualphone doesn't look quite as impressive as the Siemens Gigaset, but it certainly doesn't look or feel disappointing for the £90 asking price. Its colour screen is better than the Ubiquio's and as good as the one on the Siemens. Setting up Skype is impressively easy: you need only enter your name and password into the handset. This can display your SkypeOut credit balance on its screen, and supports Skype voicemail. A headphone jack on the handset allows you to connect a headset.

The Dualphone uses a digital DECT connection, and our test subjects told us that its call quality was among the best here. Firebox claims that the phone has a range of 50m, and we had no difficulty using it from the extremities of our large lab.

The only downside was that scrolling through a long list of Skype contacts takes a while, presumably because the phone downloads them from the web. Fortunately, you can skip to a particular name. With a handset that's easy to use and no need to keep your PC running all the time, the Dualphone is a great choice.

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