Panasonic KX-TG9344T Dect 6.0 Expandable Digital Cordless Phone with Answering System, Metallic Black, 4 Handsets by Panasonic
|
Our Price: $139.97 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $59.99 (click here) Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
Digital camera reviews of Panasonic KX-TG9344T Dect 6.0 Expandable Digital Cordless Phone with Answering System, Metallic Black, 4 Handsets
Digital camera Review: Excellent product
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this system to replace an older wireless phone system and am very pleased with the range, quality of sound, and lack of interference on the line. The installation and use of the system is simple even for those of us who are technically-challenged.Digital camera Review: Feature rich, easy set up & use, good reception, long battery life before charge
Summary: 5 Stars
If you've had a phone system with an answering machine and multiple handsets before, you'll probably find the Panasonic Dect 6.0 Expandable Digital Cordless Answering System 4 Handset System KX-TG9344T very easy and quick to set up after you complete the initial 7 hour charge (first thing out of the box: insert the batteries into the handsets, plug in the base unit and the other recharger bases, put the handset in the rechargers. The phone display tells you when the phone's fully charged). After the phones are charged, it's almost intuitive to do the rest of the set up. The instruction booklet is very comprehensive and fairly easy to follow. After I had charged up all the handsets I was able to set up the phone, record my message on the answering machine, and enter name and phone numbers for about 10 names/number on 1 handset -- it has a shared phonebook and automatically transfers your phone book and most settings to all the other handsets!! -- in about 30-45 minutes.
You can pretty much just select the menu button and then scroll through the selections to set things up without reading the instruction manual if you're a savvy user and in a hurry to get up and running but I recommend reading the instruction book to find out about all the features -- it's an easy read.
The reception has been excellent and it also works well with headsets which you have to purchase separately. I live in a high rise surrounded by buildings and walked all over my apartment while on the phone and not had any drop-offs in the reception; works fine around electronic equipment etc. (I did extensive research here on Amazon.com on phones and read a lot of reviews before selecting this model and it looks like it's paid off.)
The handsets are lightweight, and easy to hold even for someone with small hands like me. The display tells you how long you've been on your call (hours, minutes, seconds) when connected, and when not connected to a call will give you the current time and the status of the battery.
The battery life is phenomenal for a fully recharged handset. So far I've used it non-stop without recharging for 5 hours and 45 minutes without changing handsets!! The battery indicator still was one dot and had some juice left (they advertise this phone will last up to 5 hours before a recharge). Of course you can switch handsets in the middle of a call since you can do conference calling.
Features include a light keypad which lights up whenever you touch a button (this is a great feature missing from many other Panasonic phones and makes it easy to use the phone in a dark room). As mentioned, it has a shared phonebook so that when you enter names and phone numbers it automatically puts them on the other handsets. A lot of settings like date and time also automatically are transferred to the other handsets. It has a voice caller ID which you can set on or off and also adjust the volume individually for each handset; I find it helpful to use in rooms where I may not be near a handset when the phone rings (note: will have trouble with pronouncing some names -- some results are funny -- but gets easy names) -- this feature obviously only works if you subscribe to Caller ID. Each handset has a speaker phone button which you toggle to turn on or off. You can set the phone to block calls. You can even select a "night mode" and enter the times on a handset you want the ringer to be turned off and that handset will automatically not ring during that time. You can put a call on hold with a hold button which also toggles to turn on or off.
The base set comes with the answering machine, has a keypad so you can dial directly from the base (you'd have to use the speakerphone to talk if you didn't want to use the handset) and also has a mute button. Tip: the handsets use the top button to the left of the menu button to toggle the mute feature when you're on a call (I had to look this up in the instructions but it will appear on the handset screen when the phone is in use). And the phone book allows you to search for an entry by pressing the keypad to start entering the name, or scroll up or down through names using the center round button.
Most settings are easily found and used via the Menu button at the top center of the phone and scrolling through the selections. It is easy to listen to phone messages, too, this way if you don't want to use the base set although the base has more features via buttons on the base. I've used the answering system and it works very well and it is easy to hear messages during playback (you can adjust the volume). Another nice feature is handsets are interchangeable with the rechargers and base set. There is an intercom feature on the handsets which lets you contact the base set -- nice for two people to use to communicate with one another from different rooms (never used this so don't know the range).
The phone keeps tracks of calls you're received and if you subscribe to Caller ID, allows you to easily add them to your phone book or erase either one by one or all at once. Press the left top button under View CID on the handset's screen, and you have the option to "All Erase" and with a single push of a button and delete the entire caller ID list, a feature missing from many phones. Or you can go through the list one by one by pressing the down arrow key from the center circular button and chose to erase or select it to edit or save. You can easily further edit names and numbers once they're in the phone book. Tip: when entering names and numbers you push the right arrow key on the center round button to move the cursor right before adding the next letter or number.
Additional Tips: To get out of any menu, press the "Off" button. To light up the display, press the large round button with the arrow keys.
In short this is a light weight, feature rich, long life battery, easy to use phone set which, after the initial battery charging, I had up and running in under an hour. Love it! My favorite phone system yet -- and I've had a few over the years.
Digital camera Review: Fine in many ways, but quite disappointing in others
Summary: 2 Stars
[updated 10/2/10. It's now been two years, but I see Amazon is still selling the phone. It's getting more annoying with time. The phone is still the same, but I'm less patient with it. The most common issue I have is that the phones will ring, and as soon as one is picked up, the Caller ID on all the other phones becomes inaccessible. Maybe they've changed the firmware by now, but mine still ticks me off.]
[updated 2/19/09. See notes below summary at bottom. It's been many months and I still can't get used to this phone]
The machine is well-made, and will do the job for us. It does the basics reasonably well: answering machine, talking Caller ID. Voice quality is okay through the earpiece and via speakerphone. So don't ignore all the good things mentioned in other reviews. However, there are some serious limitations that I find maddening, especially considering the price.
The answering machine is limited to about 18 minutes of recording time. In this day and age, that's pitifully low. Fine for daily use, but not for a 2-week vacation. My previous answering machine, from almost 10 years ago, has more internal memory. On top of that, when the memory runs out, it doesn't necessarily tell the caller that their message will not be recorded!
The worst, most maddening annoyance: Suppose someone calls, and another family member answers the phone. You, in the other room, pick up the handset to see who called. When you press the Caller ID button, it says "System is busy...please try again later." So until your housemate 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. If I'm on a phone call and my wife comes home, and I tell her there's a message on the machine for her, she cannot listen to it until I hang up. In only a few weeks, this one limitation has already caused annoyance and frustration.
Other problems...
In some circumstances, the phone displays "Missed Call" when no call has been missed. I'm not sure what causes this to happen, but all I know is that someone will call, and afterward I'll notice a "Missed call" message. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that our phones perpetually display "Missed call." There are so many false alarms that unless I've been out of the house, I find I no longer bother checking to see if, in fact, anyone's called.
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 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 a bunch of 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.
* If you're on a handset and another call comes in, you can see the Caller ID - very nice. But, if you're on the speakerphone and a call comes in, the Caller ID does not display on the handsets. So you're in the dark.
* 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.
* I was on the phone the other night, when another call came in via Call Waiting. The display lit up for only 10 seconds. By the time I had put on my glasses, it had gone black. Even though I still had time to pick up the new call, I couldn't see the display to find out who was calling.
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.
Update: User 'Ricky' left some comments to my review, so here are my replies to him. My overall rating has not changed.
1) I had earlier written that when one handset answers a call, the other three handsets would display "Missed Call." Ricky said that this is wrong. At first, after I tested this feature, I thought he was correct. However, I've continued to have problems with incorrect "Missed Call" displays.
2) Ricky suggests that I can check my messages while on vacation to keep them from overrunning the 18-minute time aggregate time limit. This is certainly true. However, I marked this down against Panasonic because I shouldn't need to worry about such things while on vacation. It's a vacation. I can buy a 1GB MP3 player for $25 that holds many hours of CD-quality audio. So I don't understand why this phone can't hold even an hour of phone-quality audio, or at least as much as my digital answering machine from several generations ago.
3) Ricky commented that my comment about Talking Caller ID is misleading. I don't see how. All I meant was that they didn't bother to pre-digitize some common words (which they could have known about in advance), so the computer-generated voice is unnecessarily awkward.
Digital camera Review: Good Buy
Summary: 4 Stars
We purchased the Panasonic phone system about a month ago and are very pleased with the features and more importantly, the performance of the phones. The four handsets are conveniently scattered about the house and the audible caller ID prevents us from having to look at the phone to know who is calling. The computer generated voice and pronunciation leave a little to be desired but is still a good feature.
Would recommend this phone set as a definite"BUY".
H.L from Rhode Island
Digital camera Review: Good Phone
Summary: 4 Stars
I like the phones. Speaker phone is adequate. The ability to block calls is a half truth. You can save numbers to be blocked but the phone will still ring one time on your side before it changes to busy signal for caller. Cool that whatever name you put in the saved numbers, the talking caller idea will say. The only way I would improve this phone would be to add date and time to home screen when the phone is idle. Oh yeah, also can't check caller id when someone is on another one of the phones. Owned this phone for about one month now.