Sanyo PRO-700 Review

Performance:

The PRO-700 displayed the common Sanyo strengths and weaknesses. The reception was top notch and the speakerphone was great. Callers said we sounded “good, but not great,” nothing that we sounded a bit thin or distant. While plenty loud, we had the same result on our end and have seen this from Sanyos for years. Sanyo does very well in important areas like reception and volume, it’s time for them to focus on sound quality. The speakerphone was on par with Motorola iDEN speakerphones, which in our opinion are the best in the business.

Bluetooth performance was surprisingly good. Users on the other end actually couldn’t tell that we were using a headset, which is rare. On our end callers actually sounded better because there was some depth to their voice, which makes us think Sanyo’s earpiece is the cause for thin audio. Audio routed through Bluetooth for DC calls as well, but the NDC button still needs to be used to talk to the caller.

Battery life is rated at 5 hours of talk time, though we fell short by about 40 minutes. Still, 4.2 hours of talk time is on the high end for CDMA devices. It should be noted that once the phone is provisioned for PTT the standby time drops significantly, down to about 75 hours. Despite a solid talk time, this will probably be a phone you’ll need to charge at least every other night, if not daily.


Conclusion:

The Sanyo PRO-700 does what it sets out to do, and does it well. Some Nextel customers will opt for the prettier LX400, but for those users accustomed to beating up their phones we think the 700 will be the device of choice. It strikes a great balance between form and function, offering a much better in-hand feel than any iDEN phone yet still being reassuringly rugged. We didn’t have any issues with the phone itself, the loss of DC service is a network thing, and we think that Sanyo has done a wonderful job recreating the iDEN phone experience with a CDMA unit.