Review: Philips VOIP841 Internet Phone

Versatile cordless phone for both Skype and landline calls

There are plenty of Skype handsets around at the moment – and most of them seem rather overpriced, often coming in at £100-£130.

Philip’s VOIP841 phone is in the same bracket, but it does have another trick up its sleeve to help justify that rather high price tag.

Neatly designed in glossy black, and more solidly constructed than most of the rival rival Skype phones phones we’ve seen so far, the VOIP841 works with both Skype and your existing landline.

This means you can make cheap calls using your Skype account, but can also receive incoming calls to your landline number as well.

To install the phone you use an Ethernet cable to connect its base unit to your broadband router, and an ordinary phone cable to connect it to your landline telephone socket.

The phone will then ring when it receives an incoming call on your landline, and for outgoing calls you simply use the menu on the phone’s small LCD screen to switch between Skype and landline calls.

The phone works perfectly well, and should have broad appeal – particularly to small businesses and home workers who can save money on Skype calls during office hours while also being able to take incoming calls on their normal landline.

The only fly in the ointment is the fact that the VOIP841 doesn’t have a built-in answerphone. This means that it can’t entirely replace your existing landline telephone and answerphone setup.

Philips includes a voucher that entitles you to a year’s use of Skype’s Voicemail service, but this only works for Skype calls and can’t record calls made to your landline.

To be fair, the VOIP841 is more versatile than comparably priced rivals, such as the Netgear Skype Wifi Phone. It’s just a shame that the lack of an answerphone prevents it from being the ideal all-in-one phone system that it could be.