Asus AiGuru S1 Skype Phone

Asus Updated: 2008-11-25 RSS
Asus AiGuru S1 Skype Phone

The AiGuru S1 from Taiwan's ASUS is one of the new breed of cordless Skype phones that are flooding the market. The biggest difference with the AiGuru is that it also has the ability to play music and control a PC remotely. It's ideal for users that want to treat Skype as just another phone service, without having to wear a cumbersome headset or be tied to the PC.

Features

The phone comes packed with the standard fare of most modern phones, such as Caller ID, phone book entries, call history, and speaker phone function, as well as answering machine functions. Although there's no need to access a computer to scroll through your numbers or check your call history, editing your contacts can only be done through the PC, but this isn't a major issue. Support for dual-audio channel allows the AiGuru S1 to function without effecting other programs on your computer, meaning that you can watch a movie, play games or leave some music running while making a phone call.

Performance

The biggest factor holding back VoIP is that it's perceived by most as something that's very complicated and requires a computing degree to master. This couldn't be further from the truth in the case of the AiGuru S1. ASUS have provided a fold-out pamphlet on connecting to the Skype network as well as a detailed manual on using the handset. Initial setup requires you to plug in the wireless USB dongle into your PC and then installing the provided software and drivers.

The handset paired with the dongle in seconds and connected with the Skype network without any hassles. Conversations came through loud and clear with respondents experiencing the same level of quality even when we moved away from the PC and into other rooms.

Official figures from ASUS are 30m indoors and up to 100m outdoors but our tests measured the effective distance to be around 20m indoors, which is still plenty. Sound quality deteriorates when using the speakerphone for hands-free talk, which we thought was surprising considering that this same speaker is used for playing music.