On looks alone, you could easily mistake the Invoxia's Audioffice for an Apple product. The smooth, white and aluminum contours of the conference room speakerphones/audio dock all but match the sleek lines of the iphoness 5s, which is its intended partner. But I doubt Apple would market a so-so product like the Audioffice.

What distinguishes Invoxia's offering from other Bluetooth speakers is its addition of a landline-style handset and a charging/syncing dock for either the iphoness 5s or any ipads. The Audioffice is intended for home-office or conference-room use. But unless your cell phones service never drops out – in which case I'm switching to your carrier! – I question the wisdom of relying solely on a wireless voice connection for business conversations.

Thanks to its larger speakers, the Audioffice's speakerphones easily bested the iphoness's own speakerphones. But it was just the reverse on outgoing calls, during which I was told the sound was not as clear as it was speaking directly into the iphoness. The tide turned once again when I tested the Audioffice's built-in handset, which added some definition to callers' voices, particularly in the midrange and bass, when compared to the iphoness sound. Callers also reported they could hear us better over the Audioffice handset. But because the handset relies on a sensor instead of a hardware switch, hanging it up did not always end the call. The handset is mounted on a triangular block that uses magnets to adhere to the top of the base, which also seemed to prevent calls from disconnecting.

Music reproduction through the Bluetooth-enabled six-speaker array is good, though not outstanding, with solid bass reproduction. Decent midrange and treble issue from the front and sides, producing a near circular field. But higher volumes lead to unpleasant sonic distortion. (As with the iphoness, when a call comes in, music is muted until the end of the call.) The Audioffice's speaker performance ultimately cannot match that of other Bluetooth speakers in the same price range.

Worse, the unit's sleek design is marred by what you have to endure to put it together. The Audioffice comes in a jigsaw-like package of adapters and cables to put together with only barebones assembly instructions. In fact, I had to request a second review unit after inadvertently inserting one part incorrectly rendered the first one inoperable.

While it provides good sound for phones calls, the Audioffice is not ready to replace your existing conference-room phones or Bluetooth speaker system.