Yealink CP860 Review – Audio Conferencing for Mid Sized Meeting Rooms

Yealink CP860 IP Conference Phone Review

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Yealink CP860 IP Conference Phone review
Conference Phone ReviewsEndpoint ReviewsMeeting Rooms and Devices

Published: March 14, 2017

Ian Taylor Editor

Ian Taylor

Editor

China’s Yealink may have started out specialising in desktop IP telephones, but it has been swift to embrace demand for broader unified communications and collaboration endpoint products.

The CP860 is the first conferencing hardware manufactured by the company. It is marketed as a terminal solution for small to medium sized meeting rooms, suitable for broadcasting physical meetings of up to 16 people.

In this review, we will look at what the CP860 has on offer in terms of conferencing options and other features, and also how it fares in terms of audio performance and flexibility. Please remember, this review is simply our opinion of the product, and intended only to inform readers objectively. UC Today is completely independent and does not endorse or back any product, service or vendor.

How Does It Look?

The CP860 is a roughly pentagonal dark grey unit with a triangular speaker housed on top. To the front is a main control panel with a simple 192×64 pixel graphical LCD display and keyboard, which together look like a standard calculator.

What Can It Do?

The CP860 houses three built in microphones which offer 360 degree pickup at a range of around 3 metres (10 feet). That would make for quite a cramped table to seat the 16 people Yealink claims the phone can handle in one meeting, although there is the option to plug in up to two more additional microphones.

There conferencing support for up to five connections. Audio quality is good, with Optima HD and full duplex speakerphone technology. There is also acoustic echo cancelling to ensure feedback is minimised and digital noise suppression.

The CP860 supports a full range of enterprise telephone functions, including call hold, mute, Do Not Disturb, forwarding, transfer and call return. There is a searchable directory capable of storing up to 1000 entries, and you can record calls and conferences direct to a Flash drive via a USB port.

In addition to basic call and conferencing features, the CP860 can also be used as an intercom and for sending RTP stream and multicast paging and SMS messages.

What do we like?

The ability to connect a mobile phone or PC directly to the CP860 is useful. If you want to make a mobile call hands free but don’t quite trust the quality of your handset’s inbuilt microphone and speakers, you can use the CP860’s instead. Or if you are on a voice call on your laptop and want to add someone to the conversation part way through, you can turn the call into a conference quickly and easily simply by plugging in an audio cable.

Who is it for?

Although Yealink tries to promote the CP860 to medium sized businesses, I would suggest it is best suited to smaller organisations. The limit on the number of simultaneous connections mean it is probably most useful to businesses which might need conferencing occasionally as an add on to normal meetings.

What is it compatible with?

The CP860 is SIP enabled but can also connect to analogue landlines, via a Yealink PSTN Box CPN 10. It supports codecs G.722, G.711(A/µ),G.729AB and iLBC and will connect to USB devices via a 2.0 port and to PCs and mobile phones via a 3.5mm audio port.

Summary

Overall, the Yealink CP860 IP conferencing phone is a straightforward, easy to deploy product for smaller businesses looking to add some conferencing support to their communications repertoire.

It offers a full range of standard business telephone features in a unit built for conferencing use. The audio quality from the speakers and microphone is good, although you would need to deploy additional microphones to comfortably operate with the advertised 16 people in a room. The main drawback is the fact that it only offers five connections in conference calls, limiting its usefulness to businesses looking to do more and more conferencing with bigger groups.

Have you used the Yealink CP860 IP conference phone? If you would like to add your own opinions to ours, please use the comments section below. And don’t forget to share this article with friends and colleagues so they can have their say too.

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