Product Review: Snom D735
Snom is known for making well designed, engineered and functional phones that look as great as they perform. Today we’re looking at the Snom D735, which is the mid-range phone in the company’s line-up. Bringing a high-quality German look and feel, the D735 brings a rich feature set that really performs. Let’s check it out.
Features and Out-of-the-Box Experience
One feature that immediately stands out to me with the Snom D735 is its unique motion sensor. Once your hand approaches the display or function keys, the display springs to life and shows all key assignments and brings your phone’s functionality to life. This is the first VoIP desk phone to have this capability.
But the Snom D735 robust feature list doesn’t stop there.
Features include:
- A 2.8” 320×240 color LCD screen
- Support for up to 12 SIP accounts and 8 multi-purpose programmable line keys
- Dual switch gigabit ethernet ports with integrated power over ethernet (known as PoE)
- HD Audio support with support for all the major codecs including Opus
- 3-year standard warranty from Snom
When your Snom D735 arrives, you’ll open the box and discover the fashionable handset base, ethernet cord, power cords and footstand that allows you to set up the phone at the viewing angle that resonates with your office/desk setup.
Provisioning
After you unbox and set up the phone, the Snom D735 is ready for provisioning to your company’s phone system. If the Snom phone was ordered through the SkySwitch store, the phone will come automatically provisioned and ready for use directly out of the box.
As my unit came direct from Snom, I simply followed the instructions on the SkySwitch Knowledge Base, which instructed me to:
- Add the Snom D735’s MAC address to my SkySwitch Dash Manager via the MAC address, which can be found on the back of the phone
- Set the D735 to use SkySwitch’s provisioning server via the D735 web user interface.
- To find the D735’s IP address, record it upon boot-up as it’s displayed on the color screen as it loads up
- Pull up the IP address in a browser using a computer on the same network by going to http://
- Set the provisioning server to http://sipcfg.io/cfg/{mac}
- Hit save and reboot the Snom D735. The phone will reboot and be ready for use
Use and Performance
After a week of testing out the D735 from Snom, I can tell you that this phone is a real joy to use.
I enjoy the user-definable function keys that customize my phone experience. I can set my frequently called colleagues, or conference bridges, to be just one-button away and have easy one-touch access to silence my phone, conference in more folks while in-call and more.
As for call performance, the Snom D735 shines. While speaking on the handset, the people I placed calls to around the country, and in the UK, could hear me solidly and they sounded amazing to me. As for the speakerphone, I was able to speak on it and as long as I was within 3 feet, it sounded fantastic. However, beyond this radius, background noise settled in and my callers could not hear me.
One note for D735 buyers — the unit I received had no power adapter included in the box, meaning the phone relies upon power over ethernet (PoE) to do its job. So, if your office environment doesn’t support PoE, you’ll want to seek a plug-in adapter to power the D735.
If I had a complaint to lodge with the Snom product team, it’s the size of the screen on the D735 and its associated resolution/functionality opportunity cost. Case in point, the phone number has to scroll side-to-side because of the low resolution on the phone and horizontally it just doesn’t fit. The screen has too much whitespace and it seems Snom could reduce the margins to accommodate more text.
Conclusion
The Snom D735 is a mid-range phone that fills the niche of functionality, design and performance. Compared to competitors, the Snom brings an aesthetic and feature set that can’t be rivaled. The D735 sounds good, performs well and is a fantastic purchase.