VOIP SIP phone recommendations? Upgrading POTS to Asterisk

Looking for a couple low cost (but reliable, not downright cheap) corded SIP phones to replace several 2 line POTS phones that are dying.  Have a POTS line I intend to route through Asterisk (with Obi110) and a Vonage line.  Haven't exactly figured out what to do with Vonage line but one idea is to forward it to a GV number (or another provider) and have that connect through VOIP directly to asterisk.  I am on the $10 unlimited Vonage plan so cost isn't an issue but it would be nice to get away from their closed system or at least not need another ATA.
 
Whatever I do needs to be easy to use for high SAF.  Enough confusion already with MythTV and other things.
 
 
 

Personally I would port the vonage number to VoIP.ms and use them for your SIP trunk. Their unlimited is $5/month but I don't even use that - at a penny a minute but with several lines it's cheaper to just pay per minute.

I'd check out the Yealink line of SIP phones. I have their big t58G and it's one of the best sip phones I've used yet and I currently connect to several VoIP platforms at once with it.
http://www.amazon.com/mn/search/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=Yealink&linkCode=ur2&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3AYealink&tag=unhappily-20&url=search-alias%3Daps&linkId=2MGK3PSQ366FJCXW

If that's too spends then I have tried a lot of grandstream phones too and have some I can sell south of $50 - I just like the Yealink much better.

What are you using for a PBX? Grandstream has some super cheap appliances; RaspBX is slick and plenty for a house; 3CX free is good for home and runs on any windows machine, or FreePBX is good if you can run a Linux VM.

Pardon my ignorance; but what is SAF?

pete_c said:

Pardon my ignorance; but what is SAF?

Click to expand...

Spouse Acceptance Factor

Thank you Neil.
 
Here part of keeping copper around is SAF.  For whatever reason wife is very analog and refuses to utilize the VOIP lines.

I know you mention wanting SIP and some corded phones but after researching SIP phones recently after someone mentioned FreePBX, I found SIP phones to have some issues and a little expensive. I've used VOIP.MS too for many years with a Linksys PAP2 into a cordless phone. My cordless phone system needed to be replaced so I recently purchased a new Panasonic 5 cordless phone system for the price of a single SIP phone ($120). Obviously my situation may not apply to you but something to think about, simpler and less expensive but not as flexible as SIP...but works fine for me and I don't have to manage anything.

pete_c said:

Thank you Neil.
 
Here part of keeping copper around is SAF.  For whatever reason wife is very analog and refuses to utilize the VOIP lines.

Click to expand...

As I posted, I use a Linksys PAP2 with VOIP.MS and a Panasonic cordless phone system. Our phones act just like a normal telco line so wife doesn't complain at all. A telco line is likely more fault tolerant but we haven't had any worries with the system in the over 4 years since I switched and have saved tons.

Yeah here still keep multiline wireless Panasonic and Seimens phone around.  
 
Wife prefers the larger Panasonic phones than the toy like Siemens wireless phones. 
 
Her desk / work phone is a Cisco device and has no issues using that phone which doesn't make sense to me. 
 
Cell phone are off in the house or autoforwarded to house phones (whichever line) (always have been this way).

Haven't used it yet but my new Panasonic cordless system integrates with cell phones too.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ISKW1NS

Thanks for all the feedback. My system is a Beaglebone Black - similar Asterisk software to the Raspberry Pi but a bit more performance. I am running a few other things on it. Probably more performance than I really need...

I agree that a "normal" phone would be a good choice. But the wrinkle is that we now have two lines with two obvious and simple buttons on phones to select. But two line phones are not as common or low cost as single line phones and wondering if I should buy more or something else. I could use single line phones and make the dial plan handle outgoing calls automatically or require some prefix like 9. But that may be a SAF issue. One thing that I expect will have high SAF is improved CID names with a local database. And some of the other features a PBX allows.

Porting the vonage # is the long range plan. Vitelity has a pretty low cost plan and a discount for PIAF users - not that different from voip.ms
But I need to get things working well before I put asterisk in the mix.

One of the complaints is that sometimes when things mess up she is stuck until I fix it. Not a huge deal in my mind as there are cell phones but it really hurts SAF.

My plan is to implement Asterisk on the POTS line in parallel with the existing system for just my use so I can work out issues without affecting her use. Then phase things in once they are working smoothly.

I always use Polycom phones for my deployments. The speakerphone works great and the phones are reliable. I currently recommend the VVX 300 or VVX 400 models.

You can too update your Beaglebone Black to the RPi 2 if you want which doesn't really look like you need to do anyways.
 
Here I was and not overclocking the Homeseer Zee to 900Mhz.  It's still slow a bit to upgrade.  Two days ago 75 updates took almost an hour to happen.  I do then though see some time syncing (well loss of time then re syncing of events) while doing upgrades.  Concurrently a similarly sized update to the Ubuntu dual core CPU box took less than 10 minutes.
 
Well; noticed that the Panasonic multi line phones are configured such that I cannot connect to a line in use or off hook.  I must have done that a few years back.  I do not pay attention these days.  

My next home PBX will either be RaspBX or a grandstream appliance. I really like VoIP.ms and if they supported the BLF buttons I would skip the local PBX but that's a pretty big shortcoming. I used to run a PlugPBX based off the old SheevaPlug which was pretty handy - now wih the Ras Pi 2 I'll bet you can make a really nice PBX! All my cameras are Grandstream which support SIP video calls too - so one of these days I really need to tie that all together...

Cordless SIP options still aren't fantastic unless you're paying enterprise/hospital/retail prices - but I really do like my little Yealink cordless... I do recommend using DECT based handsets over wifi - unless you have a smaller home with under utilized wifi... They work just like classic cordless phones. The Yeahlink (like most DECT based SIP phones) supports 5 handsets IIRC. I was going to buy more handsets for around the house until I took my set to the office...

I'll also just throw out that a good number of these cordless handsets feel really cheap and crappy - especially your SNOM... They're so light and have horrible displays - they just feel like cheap junk. You have to find quality pieces.