Polycom SoundStation IP 5000 PoE Only (Power Supply Not Included)

We have this phone on the middle of a 3.5' x 8' rectangular table in a 14' x 18' conference room. The sound quality from the speaker is great and the volume goes plenty high enough to hear over a room full of noisy people. The phone picks up normal-volume voices very clearly from every position at the table, although the people at the heads of the table need to be sure to speak at the phone and not lean too far back or turn away when talking. Mic pickup of people standing away from the table, particularly at the long ends of the room, can be spotty- especially if the speaker is soft of voice. However, a loud/projecting talker can be picked up from basically every part of the room as long as there isn't a lot of other noise.This phone is power-over-ethernet (PoE) only and has no direct A/C adapter plugin port (I found out the hard way that the 48v adapters like this are of no use: Polycom Compliant 48v Universal Power Supply (OEM) )Instead, if you don't have a PoE system, you need an adapter that "injects" power into the ethernet cable. I bought this inexpensive device and it works great: Plusource Networks Universal 48v Wall Plug POE Injector for Most Cisco / Polycom / Aastra Phones (I posted a review for that part as well if you want more info)Finally, we run this on a Microsoft Lync/Skype for Business system. Our provider handles the provisioning so all we had to do was plug it in to the network, click through the menu to find the IP address and give it to the tech over the phone. Unfortunately I can't speak to the setup on any other VOIP system.

Bit of a pain to configure with Phone.com (not necessarily the fault of Polycom but figure its the nature of a device like this) but once we got it working, its flawless. Very good sound quality, good for a group of 10 at least and very well constructed. Recommend highly for any small business needing a reasonably priced conference phone with VOiP.

I purchased this phone and the PoE injector. The phone came on but the ethernet port didn't work. There is no way to update the software on the phone or program it or use it if the ethernet port is bad.Unfortunately, because we were doing construction on the conference room, by the time I unboxed the item, it was outside the return window and could get no remedy from Amazon or the Prime Seller. It has taken me 2 months working with Polycom to get an RMA so this device can get replaced under the manufacturer's 1 year warranty. One of the reasons? the device had already been registered in Europe...so it was not new as advertised.I will send back the broken device to Polycom and they will send me a replacement...and because I bought a too-good-to-be-true deal, it will have taken nearly 6 months to get a working phone. I've learned my lesson...I will simply buy pre-provisioned from my VoIP provider and leave the bazaar junk dealers to their own devices.

I really wanted this to work as the price & form factor seemed right for what we needed it, but we just couldn't get it to perform. We wanted this for a 5 person development team. 4 worked in a 12x12 office, 1 was remote. The remote worker is soft spoken and was difficult to comprehend with an existing Polycom IP 7000 that we temporarily moved from our main conference room before receiving the IP 5000. The IP 5000 made this person totally incomprehensible as the speaker was not loud enough. The same occurred for the mic. The IP-7000 worked, the IP-5000 made everyone sound like they were far away, whispering in the background. I spent hours adjusting the gain settings using the Polycom voice.gain.rx.analog.chassis.IP_5000 configs for rx/tx and digital/analog and a sound meter which improved the volume & pickup slightly, but it was still was not good enough. To be fair the office has a white noise system which may be adversely impacting it, but the IP-7000 worked great. Returned it and ordered another IP-7000.

We had an older analog Polycom that we replaced with the IP 5000 and have been very pleased with it. The room is about 12' x 12' and has quite a few hard surfaces, so calls tended to have echo for the people on the other end. I bought this phone in hopes that it would handle the calls and reduce echo better. It definitely has helped a lot! We may look into adding some sound absorption material, but this was the cheapest first option and was worth getting.Setting it up is easy enough of you have other VOIP devices. We input our provision server when booting up and it takes care of the rest.NOTE - this version is the POE one and does not contain an external power supply.This phone is not meant for large conference room. It doesn't have the microphone distance to support larger rooms. If you have larger conference room, consider the Polycom SoundStation IP 6000 without Power Supply (again this has no power supply, they offer a power supply version though) - I have a few of those purchased as well and really like them.