Home > Consumer Reviews > Linksys CIT200 Cordless Internet Telephony Kit for Skype

This product gets 5 stars in design and implementation. The buttons are where they should be, it feels like a phone, it "talks" like a phone. Definitley a must for every Skype fan. It also works with SkypeIn and SkypeOut so you can send and receive calls to this handset. Crystal clear voice quality. Absolutley brilliant. If I had, for the life of me, find a glitch in this device, I would say it takes a split second more than it should to scroll down on the list of skype names.

This is a great little phone. I have a lot of caveats below, but don't let that stop you from buying it. I only bring them up because they could be deal-breakers for some. This phone is relatively inexpensive for what it offers. The caveats will hopefully get worked out sooner than later. I bought it because people often cannot tell you're on the phone when you use a bluetooth device or a headset. Having the widely-accepted visual cue of an actual 'phone' makes social etiquette considerably simpler.

Pros:
I like the fact that it uses two rechargeable Ni-MH AAA batteries. I can carry spares, and I don't have to replace a costly phone battery. All cell phones should do this.

The phone's construction seems relatively solid and looks a bit like a an older one-piece cell phone. It's about the size of most clamshell cells when they're open.

The distance you can travel from the base is about equal to a decent cordless phone with a rock-solid sound quality at 1.8 GHz.

If you have skype-in and unlimited skype-out, you almost might not know you were using a non-911-enabled phone barring that you have to dial + or 00 before the entire number as if it were long-distance.

I like the sound it makes when you slide it into the charger base. It's not too loud, but you know it's charging.

The usb base that connects it to skype on the computer has a pager on it, so you can find your phone if you lost it nearby. Some folks might have liked to have the usb base and the charger base combined, but I like the fact that you can put the computer in one room and the charger in another.

[...]Cons:
If your belt clip was broken when you got it, according to one person on the linksys voip user forum, you would have to send the whole phone back to the retailer - usually an online purchase for most of us. As flimsy as the belt clip is, don't expect it to last long anyway. Lose the clip or give us an actual phone cover with a substantial clip.

While it looks sleek on a desk, the charger cradle is a little flimsy. Don't expect to just stow it in your backpack with the phone, your computer and your school books. You'll need to protect it. The cord and wallwart do not detach from the cradle. No thought was given to the skype traveler. A better solution would have been to have the cradle with a detachable plug that you could alternatively plug into the phone directly when you travel. The wallwart could have been smaller.

The install was not so easy. Directions were simple but lacking. I had to reinstall the drivers and by pure luck found the link on the desktop that starts the linksys systray icon that connects the phone to skype. If you hibernate the laptop, sometimes you have to exit and restart the CIT200 systray icon. It's the same if you restart skype. It would have been better to include 'disconnect' and 'reconnect' in the right-click-pullup menu from the CIT200 systray icon.

The party whom you are calling always hears their own voice echo to varying degrees, even though you hear no echo. This is probably due to the physical construction of the phone. When using a plantronics bluetooth headset or a wired plantronics headset directly with skype on the computer sans CIT200, there is usually no echo.

Some people have had trouble with sound not being available through computer speakers while the phone is hooked up to skype. This is easily solved if you read the directions from linksys thoroughly or look on the linksys voip user forum.

These software-updateable items need to be addressed for this phone to be a truly useful skype phone:

There needs to be a way to be a way to "off-hook" the phone from the computer. Currently you cannot direct dial from the base computer. So, if you happen to see a clickable link on a website, you'll need to dial it manually from the phone. You can't just click the link and go. Your skype-enabled web-phone-links and outlook contacts just became less useful. When you do dial from a website or skype on your computer, you get a single-tone busy signal on your phone, and the other person can't hear you and thinks they got a dropped cell call or a prank call.

You *can* create a conference call using this method: call one person first from the phone. Then add people in from the skype interface on the computer. Linksys needs to make the phone capable of creating conference calls from the phone alone without having to be near the computer.

According to a faq on the linksys forum for CIT200, the phone must remain linked in order for it to charge. That means your computer has to remain on all night for your phone to charge. That's a waste of energy. The battery charge icon is not a reliable indicator of how much juice is left in the batteries. The the left-hand battery in the phone is held so tightly in its niche that it is very difficult to remove without a metal implement thinner than a standard door key. Batteries should not be so difficult to replace if you tend to use the phone for travel and need to replace batteries on-the-go.

Tech support individuals is farmed out to a third party in India. They are entirely clueless about CIT200. It is obvious they don't even have the correct scripts in their prompters yet. Invariably, they refer to it as a router and ask you to unplug it from the wall. One suggested, after 'checking his resources' that I needed to reinstall Skype - which was working fine. After suggesting that I was not confident that they knew the product, I was told I could be transferred on one call to a superior. On another call I was told I'd be transferred to another tier of support. The next level of support never answered the phone. Either time. Don't expect any help from linksys phone support in India, courteous though they are.

Conclusion:
Buy the phone if you are familiar with skype, need something incredibly like a cordless phone and like fiddling with tech things. Don't buy one for your grandmother, mother, spouse, child, if they aren't tech savvy.

ok, so I've been using skype for a while now but through a headset. I recently bought a CIT200 and couldn't be happier. Except for the fact that the base has to be connected to a PC, this is pretty much a full functional phone.

And to the previous reviewer that said you need to add a number to a contact first, I think you need to play around with it more. In order to call US numbers using Skypeout, you hold the 0 button to use the "+". Every call basically has to be +1(xxx)xxx-xxxx if you're in the US. If calling international, you it's +xx being the country code. Now if you don't want to hold 0, you can just use 00 in place of + such as 001xxx xxx xxxx.

Back to the phone itself, going through your skype contacts is a little slow but overall, I'm very happy with it. You don't have to be stuck to your PC to be able to make or receive skype calls.

Voice quality is very good using the handset. The Speakerphone quality blew me away. I was expecting some cheap flat sounding speakerphone but this is top notch quality.

Good price if you buy it online. I wouldn't think twice about this.

This unit, reading its description, excited me. I received my unit after more than two weeks (come on Amazon) and immediately installed it. The software installation was easy, with no problem. The unit is advertised with 60 minutes free and came with a 60 minutes voucher. I redeemed the voucher, charged the battery during the night and started to use the phone in the morning. So far, so good . . .
After less than 3 (three) minutes of connection, the line went dead and I could no longer use the phone. It took me a few hours to figure out that my account had run out of money. The 60 minutes voucher is simply false advertising. I tried to get in touch with Linsys (at the phone number given on the box) and, after 25 minutes, was talking to a guy in India who told me that this product is NOT SUPPORTED by Linksys! I asked to talk to the manager and then to the manager of the manager: same answer. Second false advertising.
After sending some cash to my account, I could use the phone again and have used it now for a month.
I found a major problem with the phone: you cannot use it to call a number requiring to enter more keys, like an extension or a menu # for example. This makes this system totally useless for any business application and of limited use for other applications.
Other less important problems are random disconnects and the very awkward retrieval of numbers on the screen. The interface is so poor that when you have more than 20-30 stored numbers, it's faster to dial them, even if you need to look at your favorite tel. list somewhere to find the number! The batteries, which came with the phone, did not hold charge. I had to change them after a few days.
Conclusion: No service, false advertising and a major technical defect. I do not recommend this unit.

I buy as many of these devices as I can because I am searching for that perfect balance of comfort, technical reliability, and cutting edge design that will make my digital life easier and more fun. I use Skype intensely with my international job, and Skype has become a fixture in my arsenal of remote office and cost-cutting tools. Skype is a KEEPER!

The CIT200, however, is NOT a keeper! The CIT200 is basically a cordless phone that connects to your computer via USB 2.0. It also has a power cord with a small (but still clunky) power adapter which plugs into the base where the cordless phone charges.

The device is generally a great idea, but the SOFTWARE DRIVERS are TERRIBLE. They do not consistently load when I start my computer or Skype, yet the dialog box always claims that they are running. Skype is always updating its product and thus new versions are released with some frequency. I believe the CIT200 drivers were written for an older version of Skype, and they just don't work reliably. The manual even claims that the product was only tested with an older version of Skype.

If you're mobile and take your computer/laptop with you everywhere then this solution will not really work well, in my humble opinion. It's just not portable enough to take in your laptop bag. If you're working on a desktop and not moving the configuration around a lot, then it may work better for you. However, my biggest PROBLEM is that the product doesn't recognize Skype is running 4/5 times. The software drivers are just NOT good.

* Keep an eye out for the Netgear SPH101 Skype Wi-Fi Phone which is a great iddea, but won't work in hotels (or a Starbucks) where you need to log onto through a browser to establish a connection to the Internet.