Panasonic DECT 6.0 Expandable Cordless Phone System

...

Panasonic DECT 6.0 Expandable Cordless Phone System

...

you let the answer machine pick it up, all you have afterward is a blinking light on the phone. You assume it is the telemarketer's call, so you ignore it, not realizing that a few minutes ago when you stepped outside, a call came in from a family member that you want to return right away. But you have no indication that you have received an additional call on the answering machine until you decide to play back the messages.

When screening calls that the answering machine is recording, you can only hear the caller on the base phone, not on the extensions. So when you are in a room with only an extension and an unfamiliar number calls you, you cannot tell if it is really someone you wish to speak to, until after the call and you listen to the recording.

When playing back your recordings, the answering machine does not announce the date and time that the call was received. So you cannot be sure if the message is an old one that everyone has heard before and can be erased or if it is a new one that you need to keep until another family member has a chance to hear it. The caller should not be required to say "It's Monday at 3:30 pm" -- that's what the phone should be able to do!

Extension handsets are identified by number instead of by name. So when you need to find out which room an extension belongs to or you want to connect via intercom to another room, you have to remember that #2 is the kitchen phone instead of just seeing "Kitchen" on the display.

SUMMARY:
All of the cons listed above are features that were on the older model KX-TG5771, but are missing from the newer KX-TG93xx series phones. Most of them would seem to be a simple matter of programming. Why can't phone manufacturers keep all the good features of an old phone when they add new ones to an upgraded phone?

Panasonic DECT 6.0 Expandable Cordless Phone System

...

hangs up, there's no way to tell who called.

In fact, when someone's using the phone, you're pretty much locked out of doing anything else with the system. You can't access caller ID. You can't access the phonebook. You can't play any messages on the answering machine.

Other problems...

You can't tell from looking at the phones or base unit how many messages have been left.

There is no speed dial! You can use a built-in phonebook, but it can take many keypresses to find the entry that you want to dial.

The handsets usually say "Missed call" when in fact you haven't missed any calls at all! Reason: If you have four handsets, all of them will ring when a call comes in...but no matter which handset you choose to answer the call with, the other 3 handsets will display "Missed Call." C'mon, this is a ridiculous design decision!

In other words, if you really missed a call, all four handsets will say "Missed call." But even if you answer the call, three of the handsets will still say that you missed it.

The Caller ID is annoyingly slow. You don't get to see the whole Caller ID message at once. It shows the text part of the caller ID, waits a second or two, then shows the phone number. I did a test, and it takes approximately 5 seconds per entry to scroll through the Caller-ID list, if you want to see both names and numbers.

The Talking Caller ID is a nice feature, but could be implemented better. Many of our calls are tagged as "Unavailable." My guess is that's pretty commonplace. Unfortunately the Talking Caller ID apparently doesn't have the word "Unavailable" pre-digitized, so it has to synthesize it in that awkward hard-to-understand computer-like voice. We're already making a joke out of it.

There are other ease-of-use issues. I won't go into all of them. A few are:

* The main base unit doesn't have an LCD, which means that you can't use the phonebook from the base. Since there's no speed dial, you can only make a call from the main base unit if you know the number.

* The tone duration/spacing is long, and you can't adjust it. So when the phone dials a phonebook number or Caller ID number for you, it takes awhile for the number to be dialed. It's only a few seconds longer, but my previous phones never had this problem.

Summary: It gets the basic job done, but I'm constantly reminded of its limitations and quirks. And I need to have my old answering machine on standby for when we go on vacation. And my wife has been looking at the handsets with skepticism and trepidation, and then she looks at me. I know what she's thinking, and it's not good.