Another problem that causes much of the poor sound found on many speakerphones is the fact that these phones operate in half duplex mode; this means that the microphone and speaker are not on at the same time, thereby requiring the circuitry to try to "guess" when to mute the mic and when to mute the speaker. During a typical conversation, this can lead to volume loss and words being cut off at the beginning of sentences.
In addition, most speakerphones don't include circuitry to compensate for room ambience, so some speakerphone conversations can sound quite echoey.
When shopping for products with speakerphones where the speakerphone feature is especially important for you, look for speakerphones that claim to be "duplex" or "full duplex" or "digital duplex." And, for critical conferencing applications, where you'll be spending a lot of time on the speakerphone, consider the products in our Audio Conference Department.