I guess the ringer isn't extremely loud, but it's louder than my DX was. I missed a lot of calls when the DX was in my pocket if I was anywhere with even a moderate background noise level. I think the phone speaker is plenty adequate for media playback as well.
My complaint is actually the opposite- I don't think it gets quiet enough when the volume is all the way down. I turn my ringer way down at night so if I get a notification it doesn't jar me awake, but if someone is calling and really needs to get ahold of me I'll eventually hear it. But even at the lowest volume setting it's still too loud for my liking in that usage. And I use Gentle Alarm in the morning, with a nice long 5 minute fade-in where it's supposed to start whisper quiet and gradually rise to the max level I set at 80%. On my DX it would usually wake me up after a minute or two, but now with this phone it wakes me up right away because it just can't start quietly enough. It's not terribly harsh, but kind of annoying.
I guess it just seems like the volume doesn't have a very broad range of adjustment. Hoping to find a way to modify that eventually.