Phone Options With Skype, Best Wireless Headset

Skype, said honestly, is a great service. When performing Skype-to-Skype “calls”, the price is free. When calling regular phone numbers, the rates are great. It’s especially a good deal if you make international calls.

You can check out all the international rates here. It’s nice that Skype posts these openly without having to dig for them. A 60-minute call from the US to the UK including VAT is just $1.44! That’s a pretty good deal.

Part of the problem with Skype is that it keeps you tethered to your computer, however with a VoIP (Voice over IP) phone you can break away from the computer box and use a regular phone or a wi-fi phone.

Before continuing, you can see a complete selection of VoIP phones here, but here are the ones you would most likely be interested in.

D-Link DPH-50U

This is what you want if you want to plug in a regular phone for use with Skype. I own one of these. There are a few things to note with this unit:

First, it’s smaller than it looks in the photo. Note the phone jacks on the left to get a better idea of the actual size of this thing.

Second, you do need a better-than-average broadband connection for this to work, else it will drop calls constantly. So if you’re on a very basic 128k DSL account, this will not work and you’ll have to use a traditional computer headset.

Third, your phone was designed for sound quality in the 8000 Hz range. Skype is much higher in quality (at least 22050 Hz). Your traditional phone absolutely cannot produce sound quality higher than 8000 Hz because it’s microphone and speaker simply isn’t designed to do it.

Belkin F1PP000GN-SK Wi-Fi  Phone

You may be tempted to get one of these but I strongly suggest that you don’t because it is notorious for dropping its wi-fi connection. Read the reviews on this. It’s not worth its price tag.

Looking to go wireless? Then you want a wireless headset.

On the NewEgg site there only one headset that is wireless, not Bluetooth, connects via USB, has a microphone and excellent sound quality.

And that headset is:

Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless USB

This is the only one I could find that is a true headset that is not Bluetooth (important), has excellent USB wireless reception and superior sound quality. This one works. It’s not cheap. This will run you $75. Worth it? If you hate wires, yes. You completely break free from the computer with this.

What’s the range of this wireless? It’s stated to be 33 feet (10 meters). This should be fine for most people as going room to room does not exceed that distance. If you walk outside however, that’s a different story.

Out of the options here, the Logitech headset is the best and makes your Skype much more fun and easy to use, no question.