Doro AUB300i Telephone – Black

I work as IT Manager for a smallish business. We have a handful of digital lines from our Avaya PBX but a much larger number of analogue ones (probably about 50 that are in regular use).

After hunting around I hit upon the Doro AUB300i as a good option and bought some – one of the first put out was on my own desk. Apart from a few remarks that they were a little lacking in style and belonged in the 1980’s they are generally well received, solidly built and work well with the PBX. You alter the settings so the red LED flashes when ringing or, with a different setting, illuminates when voice mails are waiting etc. They came with multiple ringer tones (by that I mean the key in which it rings) as well as multiple ringer styles (the actual sound it makes). They talk fine with our PBX and always display external caller display info and with internal calls also display the name of the caller (provided by the PBX). Any numbers from direct dial or menu access memories also display the caller name entered when input.

Build quality is solid, there are many options for how they display information, a 30 number incoming call memory and high sound quality on both handset and speaker. Full duplex handsfree conversations have never been a problem with people easily able to hear what I say.

That combined with a competitive price seemed to make it the ideal handset and more and more were deployed across the business. But it turns out the solid build quality was on the outside only. Slowly but surely more and more handsets failed, mostly with the same problem – crackling on the line, audible only to the Doro user (the caller could not hear it). This gradually gets worse until the handset becomes unusable. The speakerphone is not affected, handset only. Swapping around the handset element with known good ones has no effect – the problem is obviously internal. Failure rate is probably around 40% and life expectancy just a few months. At first I sent them back. Both Doro and our supplier (not Amazon) have been helpful throughout but as the problem affected more and more units and I got fed up with the amount of time taken to RMA low value items I looked for an alternative solution.

To be honest, I have not found anything anywhere near as good at such a competitive price. If only they didn’t keep breaking!