Telephone Reviews

You would think that Panasonic Cordless phone and Panasonic Hands-Free Headset would work well together, being that they are sold by the same company. Well, that is clearly not the case. I bought this headset specifically for the reason that it is sold by Panasonic to work with their cordless phones. I've tried it a few times and each time I get the same response from the person I'm talking to. They say I sound too far away, that they can barely hear me. This product is clearly not worth it.

I was looking for a convienent way to speak with colleagues and clients from my home office without being tied down to my desk. I have a Panasonic cordless phone and decided to stick with the same brand.

This KX-TCA98 seemed to fit the bill. Unfortunately, the over-the-ear option does not allow for use of the enclosed padded "ear muff" - instead, a plastic ring fits behind your ear and a hard plastic speaker enclosure sits directly against your ear ... it's the only way it works, trust me. This arrangement is OK but isn't very comfortable. Also, when used like this, the sound volume is much lower than listening through the telephone itself (yes, even with the volume on headset and phone both up).

The headband wear option utilizes the "ear muff" and offers acceptable sound quality, loudness, and comfort against the ear. Unfortunately again, a compromise in the headband option reveals itself in the mirror ... one side lays flat and snug against your head while the speaker and microphone side push the headband out and away from your head so far that it looks absolutely ridiculous! (Hopefully you work alone)

The in-line volume and mute features work well.

In hindsight, I should have bought a headset-only model which probably fits better, has a better ear muff, sounds better and looks less hodgepodge. Just to top it off - the packaging is sooo difficult to open (even when carefully cut) that it is destroyed in the process - negating any possibility for exchange!

The morale: Don't try to be everything to everyone, just be really good at something.

Same audio problems with ours, only the microphone is weak as well as the speaker. Also, we can't seem to find a replacement battery that works, after 3 trips to RadioShack! This one's going in the dumpster real soon...

There are a number of nice features on this phone, but they are all overshadowed by its extremely poor sound quality. We have the handset turned up to the maximum, and yet we can often barely hear people on the other end of the line. In addition, since we bought it there have been mysterious clicks occurring on the line -- everyone is constantly asking us if our line is tapped.

The sound quality of the outgoing answering message is also poor. Incoming messages sound fine, though.

The battery life is fine. But the sound quality really makes this a hard phone to use. We are buying something else, after owning it for only two months.

I purchased this phone to replace my dead 900MHz phone. The phone is very attractive and a breeze to install. The phone had perfect clarity......but the phone CAN NOT be used for long calling times. This is the perfect phone for a teenager !

The ear-piece is convexed w/o a recess for the ear canal area. This phone causes pain to the ear in less than 5 minutes. Both my wife and I avoided using the phone in favor for our very old analogue cordless. The phone was returned after 3 days of use.

Try the fit of the phone out at a local retailer before you buy.

When I bought this phone for my home office, I was pretty excited about it. Its exterior is an attractive matte silver, the handset feels good in the hand, and has a nifty lighted keypad and screen that even tells you the length of your phone calls. However, this was the first cordless phone I've ever owned whose sound quality on the other end (what's received by the person to whom you're talking) is so markedly poor that people commented on it. When my husband and I tested it out ourselves, we were horrified to discover that this phone is so unclear that it makes you sound like you have a lisp. Also, I never found a way to comfortably hold the handset next to my ear for extended periods of time. It's possible our particular phone was a lemon, but unlikely; we returned it immediately, and are trying our luck with the vtech2431.

The first time I got this phone it went bad in 29 days. I was lucky it was still under warranty. I returned it to Amazon. I got my second phone and all I hear when I talk on the phone is statistic. I now have to replace this phone. This phone is awful!!!

This stylish grey/black phone features decent range, good quality, and virtually no features outside a talk button! Actually, it does have three memory buttons, but for $25, it's quite a good deal.
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Well, it's now a little over a year since I wrote the above and the price of this product has gone up $15. My unit has also died completely. Too bad it's only a few weeks out of warranty.

The first time I got this phone it went bad in 29 days. I was lucky it was still under warranty. I returned it to Amazon. I got my second phone and all I hear when I talk on the phone is statistic. I now have to replace this phone. This phone is awful!!!

This stylish grey/black phone features decent range, good quality, and virtually no features outside a talk button! Actually, it does have three memory buttons, but for $25, it's quite a good deal.
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Well, it's now a little over a year since I wrote the above and the price of this product has gone up $15. My unit has also died completely. Too bad it's only a few weeks out of warranty.

The handset doesn't work at all. I thought it was the battery but after a couple of months, it stopped working again. This phone was great in the beginning, but now it's just junk. Too bad.

I completely support the reviews of people below. It has got to be some kind of a common problem with this phone. The "Talk" button stopped working several months after the purchase. Save your bucks. Buy smth. good instead. I gave it 1 star just for working for 4 months.

This phone had good reviews when I bought it. Don't waste your money. First, I had problems with the phone not responding when I pressed the talk button. I changed the battery, but it's still fickle -- sometimes the talk button works, sometimes it doesn't. The remote features have stopped functioning completely -- I can't retrieve messages when I'm not at home. I'm very dissapointed with this phone.

The V-Tech 20-2438 has an attractive array of features at a reasonable price, but the performance of this phone is extremely poor. Practically speaking, the most important aspect of any telephone is its audio quality, and this model fails by any measure (static, poor reception, echoes, slow dialing and distortions). It was a disappointment because we were replacing another VTech model (900mhz model VT 2931) which was comparatively excellent in sound quality and range, if a bit outdated with a telescoping antenna (which cracked and rendered the entire phone useless).

Reception is terrible - lots of interference. Battery life is just awful. Lasted about 1.5 hrs when first bought, now, 4 months later, lasts 30 min. BIG WASTE OF MONEY.

I bought this phone for my home office. I had a Panasonic I really liked, but it was lacking a mute button. Since I work from home, I spend quite alot of time on conference calls, using the speakerphone. I wanted to have a mute button so I could do things while listening. The speakerphone on this phone is AWFUL. It fades in and out, making it virtually impossible to hear what's going on, even with maximum volume. Don't waste your money!

What the other folks have said so far is correct! However, here's some new downfalls of this machine nobody has seemed to mention yet:

"REPEAT" doesn't mean "Repeat". It means "GO TO PREVIOUS MESSAGE". ie. If you're listening to a message and someone is giving you their phone number and you missed a digit, you should be able to hit repeat and listen to the message again. NOPE! Instead it takes you back to the PREVIOUS Message that you don't need to hear again. In the manual, it says this will only happen if the message is giving the time/day stamp part of the message, but this is incorrect. IT HAPPENS ALWAYS! I called AT&T Customer Service on this issue and they could care less.

"TIME/DAY STAMP": You can't shut off. Every other feature on this machine you can turn on or off except this one. Most of the time, I could care less if they called at 10am or 2pm, I still need to return the call. Besides, most people end up saying what time they called anyway as habit. Why do I need to hear the time twice?

NO NUMBER OF MESSAGES DISPLAY: When you come home, they want to you to count the number of times the light blinks. If it blinks 9 times, I have 9 messages. That's exactly what I want to do when I come home from a hard day's work is count blinks on my answering machine every day. Darn it, if there's 5 new messages, just spell it out for me on a LCD display.

CALLER I.D. PHONE NUMBER ANNOUNCE: It could be a great feature. But I like to keep my number of rings on 2 before it answers. The problem is that then the machine won't read you the number calling. The manual is incorrect. It says that the number will be read no matter what, but that the rings would change to 3 to allow enough time to read the number. Again, this is incorrect.

I [didn't pay very much] . You get what you pay for! Shame on me!!

This is the worst machine I have ever owned, would have given it a "0" rating but the rating scale won't let a person rate the low. It worked fine for the first month, but into the second month after that the messages became garbled and and progressively worse intill you could not understand the messages at all,it seemed like the more messages I recieved the worse it became. I deleted the messages to make sure that the machines mailbox wasn't just too full, but that was to no avail. This was in a three month time period. I don't know how well the remote feature worked for I never needed to use it. I would save the money and buy a different brand, unless you love the sound of people under water..hehe.

This machine is fine unless you depend on remote calling to check your messages. The first few times everything performed properly but suddenly, it began to play the messages and then just cut off. The messages are still there, once you get home and actually hit the play button, but you can not retrieve them from other locations. You also have to stand directly over the machine when recording your outgoing message or you will sound like you are in a box. Even, then, the sound quality is nothing to write home about.

I have the same problem as all the other reviewers. At first I thought I was turning on the phone when I was putting it down, and coming back to find it almost dead. After more careful observation, I found out the battery goes from 3 bars (full) to dead within a matter of minutes. I follow all the procedures for recharging NiCd- even letting the battery go completely dead between recharges. The phone is now just under a year old, and I was thinking about getting a new battery, but I don't think so after reading the other reviews. I'm very dissapointed.

If I could rate this with zero stars, I would. This phone cannot hold a charge for more than 45 min. This is by far the worst cordless phone I have ever experienced - I would rather be tethered to a rotary dial phone with a 2 foot cord than continue on with this phone. I agree with all of the other reviewers - JUNK!

Like all the other reviews I have just read about this phone I have experienced a very short battery life. I have had this phone for about a year now and I spent a lot of money buying batteries to replace the original but that didn't help at all. The display on the phone shows the battery as full but after 2 minutes the phone beeps and I have to switch phone. Terrible.

I would not recommend this telephone. I have had the same problem where, during a conversation, the telephone keeps cutting out. On my end I hear nothing for anywhere from a brief 1/2 second to seomtimes several seconds. On the other end the other party hears beeping. I'm on my 2nd telephone from At & T with the same results. I can't use this phone!

I have used this phone for quite awhile. The sound quality is just terrible. There is a constant echo. Do not buy this phone.

Very Disappointed! I thought this phone would be the "cats meow" with all of the features, and the expandability. Bought two more handsets after we bought the original base unit and 2 handsets. I think since day one, the call waiting ID worked 3 times or so. Had AT&T send us a whole new setup including new base unit and new handsets and the problem is still there. Just had AT&T send us our 2nd new base and the problem is still there. Wouldn't recommend this phone to anyone. This phone has many problems including poor sound, lackluster performance, just plain bad. Wish I could get my money back! Good Luck!