Nortel T7316E Phone Review, A Top of the line Office Phone

Submitted by: Kevin W. (1/28/14)

A friend of mine owns a small telecommunications business in our local town. He hooked me up with some phones he said were the best he had in stock (at a discounted price of course). They were a little pricey but I decided it would benefit my business in the long run. By doing a little investigating online I discovered that Nortel was recently bought out by Avaya, another large company in the telecommunications industry. I thought this would mean I would be receiving phone with discontinued repair parts and outdated software, but it was actually the opposite. My associate assured me that this was a good thing because Avaya was one of the more reliable companies in the industry and they had just remade this Nortel T7316E phone from their factories and such. I took his word for it. After all he was hooking me up with a great deal on the phones so I couldn’t really complain too much.

He installed the Phone system which was compatible with the phones which is another very important aspect of having a well-oiled and complete telephone system (not just the phones). I believe I had the CICS system installed.  This also happen to be a top of the line model that he had, at the time at least, keep in mind this was about a year and a half ago and I’m sure some things have progressed. I received a total of 30 phones for my employees and one expanded model for myself.

Nortel T7316E

The “Pros”:

After having them for a little over a year now I can say fairly confidently that I enjoy the phones performance thus far.

The displays look nice and for a multiline system it runs pretty flawlessly. They were also pretty easy to program. I like to keep things organized so having all the memory buttons really helped in this area. Another plus is this thing is durable. An employee in my office spilled coffee on her phone once and it didn’t seem to have any effect. I wouldn’t recommend spilling coffee on your phone but you get the point!

Some Minor “Cons” ( nit-picky ones):

The “end call” button looks a little too similar to the “Hold” button. This has caused me to drop a few calls when first starting to use the phones. After the first few weeks I began getting the hang of things and haven’t made that mistake since. No biggy. 

Also, for the average consumer or small business these phones can be pricey. Look around for refurbished models on Google or eBay or something because you can probably save half the price by going with a place that refurbishes these phones rather than sells them new.

Conclusion

To conclude my Nortel T7316E phone review I would have to say that these phones are the real deal. It could be the system I am suing as well but the phones have not let me down. If you’re on the fence about buying these for your office I would say go for it. The minor flaws are drastically outweighed by the benefits having this reliable product. Definitely shop around for the best price though as I stated above. Not everyone has a friends who sells these things (like myself, fortunately) so finding a good price will be wise. Thanks.