Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
73 of 74 people found the following review helpful.
Beautiful Design, Tons of Features, and Great Sound Quality
By J. Harley
After my last Panasonic DECT 6.0 3-phone system inexplicably stopped working, I sought a similar replacement set. I've generally found Panasonic phones to be very reliable and figured my last purchase was simply a lemon (occasionally happens to the best). I ended up purchasing the KX-TG7433. The first thing I have to say is that the phone is gorgeous. The black shiny finish is much more sleek and attractive than the previous bland beige Panasonic I owned. The display is also much larger and vivid with a high-contrast black on gray LCD with large easily readable characters. The LCD and keypad are both well illuminated when any button is pushed. The time and date are prominently displayed on the LCD in standby mode. When you have a missed call or message waiting, it is also clearly displayed on the handset LCD, as well as a flashing amber LED on top of the handset. The set comes with three handsets, a base with built-in digital answering machine, and two charging bases for the extra handsets. In addition to the time and date, the LCD also displays icons for phone book, menu, and redial above their respective buttons. The center menu joystick is nice and intuitive, but it also brings about my only gripe. On my previous Panasonic phones, the most important buttons (caller ID, voice mail, redial, and phone book) were all one touch access. On this model, you have a few one touch items (mentioned above), but most features have to be accessed through the menu. Phone book items entered on one handset are automatically shared with the other handsets.Voice quality is excellent as usual for Panasonic. Although I personally would prefer the volume to be a tad bit louder at the higher end, both the handset and speaker phone have adequate loudness and clarity for most people. There are no sudden drop outs or other sound issues like I occasionally experienced with the prior DECT 6.0 phone. The phone features talking caller ID, which is really cool. A female robotic voice will announce (or sometimes comically try her best to announce), the name of the caller (the voice cannot be changed, like on a GPS). The announcement is loud and clear and really comes in handy because you can decide whether or not to answer the phone if you are away from the handset, without disrupting whatever you're doing. The voice will also function as an alarm clock and even alert you when the battery is low. This model also has a new feature called "Choice Mail", which allows you to view caller ID info for pending messages and selectively choose and play them in any order. Sadly, this feature only works with the built in digital answer machine. If you subscribe to your telephone service provider's voice mail service, as I do, you're out of luck. Panasonic did not completely leave telecom voice mail service subscribers out of the equation. There are separate icons in the menu for the built-in answer device and subscription voice mail service. Like previous Panasonic models, the handset will automatically dial your voice mail service access number if you select the option. If you do plan to use the built-in answer service, it offers 18 minutes of record time and the choice mail feature, so that's a major plus. However, I can't comment on the built-in voice mail quality because I don't use the feature. The phone also features a privacy mode which allows you to choose periods when all, or select, phones will alert you with visual lights instead of an audible ring, and call block mode which allows you to block unwanted numbers from ringing. Battery life is better than average. Even with all the extra bells and whistles like talking caller ID and the larger LCD, I still get basically the same battery life, (approx 2 days between charges with several hrs accumulated talk time), as my previous phone which had a smaller dimmer LCD and non-illuminated keypad. I believe I can get even more battery life, because I have yet to hear the robotic battery alarm. However, I tend to recharge when the meter reaches one bar, just to be on the safe side. This model still uses the AAA size Ni-MH batteries.I am really happy with this phone, especially at the current price. It's an unbeatable bargain. It has features galore, good sound quality, solid build, and a gorgeous design.
32 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Almost perfect!
By Dude
One of the best features of these handsets is the extremely large LCD display that is backlit in a bright white with LARGE black dot matrix lettering (great for my mom who has poor vision without her glasses).... this LCD is simply heaven! However, because the LCD is so large, the ear piece is just a single tiny hole at the very top of the phone instead of a large speaker with multiple holes, as is found on most traditional handsets. This forces you to position the phone against the ear in an awkward position, with the very top edge of the phone crossing the center of your ear. Otherwise, if you hold it comfortably on your ear as you would any other phone, the volume is lower because the single hole for the speaker would then be near the back/top of the ear. It takes about a week to adjust to this minor design inconvenience. That being said, the adjustable volume does need to be louder, and if it were louder you could probably position the phone normally at the top or back eadge of the ear.One of my other favorite features of this handset trio is the talking caller ID. The phone can be across the room, out of sight, and you will always know who is calling. It doesn't speak perfect English all the time, but you can overcome this by saving your most frequent callers in the phone's "phonebook". Once saved in the phone book, you can title the caller's name however you'd like and the talking caller ID will read (and show) the saved version of the person's name. Then, if the talking caller ID can't perfectly pronounce your saved spelling of the caller's name, you can go into the phonebook and edit the name so that it will pronounce it correctly. For example, the talking caller ID says the name "Tracy" like "Tray-zee", but you can save the caller's phone number in the phonebook and edit their name to be "Traysee" and it will pronounce it correctly. "Associates" is another one that it really has problems pronouncing, but just save the caller's number in the phonebook and edit the name to be "Uh so she ettes" and it works great. 80% of the time, though, the talking caller ID gets it right.
49 of 53 people found the following review helpful.
Nice value, but you get what you pay for...
By Jeff ten Bosch
While I only gave this product three stars, that doesn't mean that it's not good enough for the majority of people looking for an expandable cordless phone system. The phones work and look great. The main base is small enough that it doesn't take up too much space on a table. The call quality is great and will definitely work well through extended distances. One feature that I really like is the ability to listen to the answering machine through the individual handsets. This is nice if you're not close to the base and you just want to listen to messages. It also means that the base can pretty much go anywhere, since it's not necessary to access it, unless you want to turn off the answering machine.Now, for the reasons that I gave it only three stars. First of all, the base is nearly useless. Yes, it holds the answering machine, but all that's on the base are a few buttons and some LED's. There's no message counter, or anything that many other expandable phone systems have. Our last phone (which was a VTech) had lots of features on the base, such as the current time/date, number of messages waiting, dialer, and a speakerphone. The other thing that I don't like about the phone is the weak and 'sometimes' simplex speaker phone. The mic does not pick up audio as well as our last phone. This often results in people speaking over each other, or just having to repeat and talk extra loud. We use the speakerphone enough, that had I known it was this bad, I probably wouldn't have bought it. We're learning to deal with it.I would only recommend this phone if you don't care too much about the speakerphone feature, and if you're need for an answering machine is minimal. Otherwise, I would suggest you look at the other phone systems.
See all 85 customer reviews...
0 comments:
Post a Comment