The Polycom VVX 400 is a mid-range phone with a color 3.5” LCD screen and 12-line display. The layout is designed to streamline call management. The VVX 400 features all the functions you'd expect to find in a modern desk phone, including call transfer, conferencing, hold, and mute, along with business VoIP staples such as HD voice.

On paper, the Polycom VVX 400 sounds like a solid mid-level device for office workers. But would it live up to our expectations? We took the phone for a test drive to find out.

First Impressions

The Polycom VVX 400 is very well designed. The matte color and size make the VVX 400 look good without eating up too much desk space. You can adjust the height to three different levels. The color LCD screen also helps to anchor the phone and gives ample space when it comes to monitoring lines and users.

The phone has a 12-key dial pad and hard keys for different call functions. The hard keys are well placed and well apportioned, making call handling much easier. There's a Select button that acts as a navigator key and a home button that brings you the Menu section of the phone. You’ll see settings, messages, directories, DND, forward, and intercom functions as quick access buttons below the screen.

Polycom VVX 400

There are three expansion modules on the phone, as well as two Ethernet ports: one for a network and one for a computer with PoE (10/100). For comparison, the next iteration in the Polycom phone line, the VVX 410, has gigabit Ethernet ports. As such, we listed the Ethernet ports under “Cons” on the sidebar because we felt the phone could have benefited from more gigabit ports.

Features

The Polycom VVX 400 has 12 lines and is capable of registering up to 12 SIP accounts. The 12 lines can act as account registrations or as Busy Lamp Fields for monitoring your colleagues’ phone availability. Notifications are present on the screen, indicating whether you have missed calls or voicemails. These appear on the top right of the LCD screen, along with an LED indicator on the phone itself.

The VVX 400 is compatible with IPv6 networks. You can choose which IP version to use, or you can enable both. We preferred using IPv4 in our testing. The VVX 400 also has a host of other business phone features that include:

Call timer and call waiting

Call transfer, hold, forward, pickup

Called, calling, connected party information

Local three-way audio conferencing

One-touch speed dial and redial

Codecs: G.711 (A-law and μ-law), G.729AB, G.722.1, iLBC, Opus

Busy lamp field

Multilingual user interface

Media encryption via SRTP

Remote missed call notification

Do not disturb function

Voice Quality

Voice Quality

The Polycom VVX 400 has excellent voice quality. We tested it with other VoIP phones and landline phones; both yielded top-rate responses. The VVX 400 is marketed as a mid-range phone, but its voice quality keeps up with the best models around. We were also impressed with how clear the speakerphone was. Normally, the speakerphone usually suffers because the person is farther away from the receiver. With the VVX 400, the voice quality sounded like it remained HD throughout our calls.