Review: Linksys CIT200 Cordless Internet Telephony Kit

Linksys' Cordless Internet Telephony Kit (CIT) recently started hitting store shelves. The product puts Cisco / Linksys' seal of approval on Skype, lending it further legitimacy - as if Skype needs that in light of its purchase by eBay. It looks like our preview was pretty much dead-on as far as it went, so now that I've actually got one in-hand, this review will focus more on the user experience and performance. I'll also be making frequent comparisons to its closest competitor, the Olympia DUALphone, which I looked at a few months ago.

The first thing that struck me was the CIT handset's size, which is smaller than I had expected. It is sized more like a largish candy bar style cellphone than a typical cordless phone. Figure 1 shows it side by side with the DUALphone, but still doesn't fully convey the difference in size.

Figure 1: CIT and DUALphone handsets front view
(click image to enlarge)

You can also see the difference in the CIT's 98 x 67 CSTN color display which supports graphics good enough to clearly display Skype Online status logos vs. the DUALphone's monochromatic 16 character by 3 line display which is only alpha-numeric.

Figure 2: CIT and DUALphone handsets side view
(click image to enlarge)

The side (Figure 2) and back views (Figure 3) complete the fashion show.

Figure 3: CIT and DUALphone handsets back view
(click image to enlarge)