My mini-review: Plantronics’ CT11 has one big flaw

For a very long time now (maybe 5 or 6 years), I’ve used the Plantronics CT10 as my primary telephone at work. I like the fact that I can walk around with this thing within my office or around the office, answer phone calls from it (it’s a regular POTS telephone and most of the handsets on our office PBX have a POTS connector on them), and dial out from it. But in the past couple of months the voice quality has been marred by a periodic clicking sound so last week, with some downtime because of the holidays, I set out in search of a replacement.

I came across the Plantronics CT11 and it looked like just what I wanted — an upgraded version of the CT10, 2.4Ghz instead of 900 Mhz, basically, a newer model of my old favorite. It came in yesterday (courtesy of Amazon Prime) and I love the new device except it has one fatal flaw: With my old Plantronics CT10, I could use the phone while it was on its base charging but with the newer CT11 you have to remove the cordless unit from the base in order to use the telephone. A small thing (and not something that really could have been captured in a bulleted list of features) but it kills the Plantronics CT12 for me. I’d say that 70% of the time, I use this thing sitting at my desk and if I have to perform the extra task of removing the thing from the base and then replacing it everytime I make and finish a phone call, that’s a big step backwards from what I had before. Bummer!

Back to my old phone until I find something else.