Bang & Olufsen BeoCom 2 telephone review

They always say style comes at a price and boy do they mean it with the Bang & Olufsen BeoCom 2

23 March 2006 0:31 GMT / By Stuart Miles

They always say style comes at a price and boy do they mean it with the Bang & Olufsen BeoCom 2.

At £500 it would probably be cheaper to fly to the person you are hoping to talk to on the other end of the dog and bone rather than buy this model, however flying there cramped in economy is probably the furthest you could get away from this handset.

In a word: sleek. The BeoCom 2 is such a design statement for your living room, kitchen or office (we haven’t said bedroom, because this is something you’ll want to share) that if you can afford to splurge £500 on a phone you won’t care that it's not the most advanced piece of kit on the planet.

You will care about one thing: how envious your mates will be when they come over, and oh while they mock you for spending that much on the phone (sorry you can’t hide it from them now) deep down they will want to caress it, hold it, make calls to it. We know we have.

Crafted from a single piece of aluminium, the phone is a very strong design statement. Standing upright - imagine a very tall slender banana and you’ve sort of got the idea.

The phone comes in six colours but the one in our minds to go for is Yellow. Just like a speed camera this isn’t something you should try and hide.

Get past its looks and the BeoCom 2 is a rather ordinary phone to tell you the truth. Yes you can run six of these off the one unit (yes that is £3000) and the internal phonebook is built up as calls are made and received, and can hold up to 200 name and number entries. BeoCom 2 also gives access to the latest 16 incoming and outgoing calls.

Telephone voice and hearing quality is very good and the phone even comes with its own specially-composed ringtone that is just as futuristic as the handset itself.

Verdict

There is no doubt this is a beauty to behold and to be honest the pictures don't really do it justice. But get past its iconic style statement and what you've really got is a very expensive landline phone.

Probably the best way to describe it, is buying a Bentley over a gadget friendly Renault Laguna. They will both get you there and the laguna has far more features like keyless doors, automatically closing wing mirrors, and the rating of the safest car in its class, but I know which one I would want to turn up in.

If you've got friends to impress and big bank balance to spurge, and the urge to own a statement rather than phone, this one will be for you.

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Review Recap

Made by: BangAndOlufsen
Price as reviewed: £500
The good: Design, stand
The bad: Apart from looking cool, it's not packed with features
Quick verdict: If you’ve got friends to impress, and big bank balance to spurge and the urge to own a statement rather than phone this one will be for you
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