Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
89 of 91 people found the following review helpful.
Two Great Features
By Anthony R. Pagano
Notwithstanding the complaints of others this phone works great out of the box. The handsets are easy to hold, easy to read, and the volume is more than adequate for those whose hearing isn't as good as it used to be (like me). And while this phone system does have a large number of features the paper manual has a well laid out matrix for locating the features you need to set up or access. Now for the two great features I've never had:1. When you let the answering machine pickup an incoming phone call you don't have to jog to the base station to monitor the message being left by the calling party. You can set up things up so that all remote handsets can monitor the message being left as well.2. And the most important feature in a world of unwanted, unsolicited and mostly unstoppable robo calls is the BLOCK CALLS feature of this phone system. I've found that the "Do Not Call" list mechanisms provided by the gov't are almost universally ignored by telecall centers. And complaining to the government agencies is even more useless. Before I dropped my Verizon Landline service I could only block 5 telephone numbers and when I switched to my cable provider's phone service I could only block 20. Luckily this phone system allows you to block up to 250 different phone numbers. You can also set the phone to "no ring" when a blocked number is received. My home phone has been blissfully quiet. I only have to add a few new annoying numbers each week. This feature alone is worth the price of the phone.
138 of 160 people found the following review helpful.
Missing Basic Features found on former 900 mHz Panasonic Cordless Phone System
By mmctec
Let me start this review by saying that my 900mHz Panasonic phone system that I couldn't kill worked beautifully; I just wanted more cordless handsets and couldn't add any. So, I purchased the Panasonic KX-TG7873S (model # on box was TG-7873;this review also applies to TG7873/4/5. Note: When the operating instructions booklet is 95 pages including the front/back covers, you know that this is not a simple, cordless phone. While the ability to link two cell phones* to this system is fabulous along with independent alarms per handset, verbal caller ID and numerous other features, the non-intuitive set-up of phone features and easy, basic functionality that is missing from this phone system made me rate this item as a "3."*Another reviewer of Panasonic link to cell phone systems said these phones are not compatible with the iPhone 5, but I use another brand and cannot confirm whether the Panasonic is compatible with the iPhone 5. Check Panasonic's compatability list before buying to ensure your cell is listed.Panasonic, take note:1. Volume on handset earpiece which only goes up 3 steps (4 levels) can be too low. Had difficulty hearing some voice mail outgoing messages when I dialed other people I call often. Good luck if you have any background noise or music in your home! Hooked up old phone - volume was louder and OM's could be heard just fine.2. No hold button. You have to press the menu key (very small button on other side of handset) twice to enable hold. Who designed this? Isn't the "hold" feature an integral part of every phone since wired AT&T trimline phones came out (which are still sold on eBay)? Why hit a key twice to enable hold, which did not "take" a few times when I did it? C'mon Panasonic. You can do better.3. Handset size (smaller than Panasonic Model KX-TG7745S) is a bit small to comfortably hold phone between ear and shoulder. Doesn't everyone do this whenever they are in the kitchen, making dinner? And, the handset is not shaped to follow any facial contours -- it's totally straight. So, when you try to crook the phone next to your ear, you cannot hear the person very well because the handset shifts position. Maybe it's because I move around a lot when I cook. Even so, I am not doing jumping jacks, so the phone should stay put.4. Charging bases can be tipped over real easily if you hit the phone by mistake. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Guess Panasonic couldn't afford to weight the plastic charging bases and the plastic base unit for this system. (Bases for TG7743/4/5 are a bit larger and slightly weighted so they don't tip over as easily as TG7873.)Also, power cords for the charging bases should be longer. The very thin cords are 6'10" long. Also, the cords are hard-wired into the charging bases. So, if one becomes loose or breaks, you'll have to buy a new base. Note: When you want to buy another handset, Panasonic supplies the charging base, but I don't know if you can buy just the base if the cord breaks. (TG7873 has cords that connect to bases with sturdy L-jacks.)5. Handset keypad is illuminated strangely. Instead of having clear keys where the numbers are illuminated by the backlight, the phone I received had black keys which are not illuminated. There is an amber backlight behind the keypad that lights up the space around the keys, but the illumination doesn't have the same intensity across the keypad. My Panasonic 900mHz system was much easier to read at night with the room lights off because it had clear keys. (Amazon's picture of the TG7873S that I ordered shows orange-numbered keys; the unit I received [TG-7873] has white-numbered keys.) Note: TG7743S/7745S have handsets with clear keys which are illuminated by the backlight.6. Setting various functions is tedious because you cannot just scroll through features using the Menu button and intuitively find what you want. While you can set some features using the Menu button, you have to use the operating guide to enable, set or change most others. Once you find the feature in the operating guide that you want, you have to press the Menu button and enter a 3-digit code to access the desired feature and then go through the steps to set or enable it. Took a while to find how to turn off verbal caller ID, never mind finding the code to change the voice mail dial-in number when I changed tel providers. Be prepared!7. With Magic Jack VOIP in the house, the network ethernet/LAN cable and the phone line must be connected to the VOIP gizmo before it's plugged in for power; Magic Jack does not operate using wireless LAN. Since I had to move my kitchen phone to my home office to use the LAN connection, I was left with a handset in my kitchen and missed being able to use a speaker wall phone. Note: There is no hardware to connect handsets to a wall phone mount that exists in the kitchens of many homes built before 1980 and keeping a phone on the counter in a small kitchen gets in the way of food prep. While the handsets have a speakerphone feature, the handsets only work when removed from the charging base; you cannot use speakerphone with the handset sitting in the base. Now, who wants to hold a phone when prepping dinner? Panasonic should develop an attachment to connect a handset to a kitchen wall phone jack for customers who have them or enable the handsets sitting in the charging base to function whenever speakerphone is engaged.4/29/13 update: Panasonic told a customer in another review on its website to use two screws to affix the charging base to the wall. So much for a vendor adjusting to customer needs.8. The area for names in the contact list/address book should be a smaller point size or it should be longer to accommodate more letters. I ran out of room when entering business names and couples where I wanted to list both parties' first names with the surname. Also, caller ID info seems to be too big for the display area on the phone and everything is capitalized, which eats up more display area than U/L case. And, names do not sort in alpha order; they sort in the order they were entered.9. The ring selections sound nothing like a "ma bell" phone. Really? What's up with that, Panasonic? The 16 ring styles (1 for Xmas) are not the best and sound like computer-generated ring tones from the 80s or 90s, and I didn't want any of them. I wanted a "clean" phone ring like my 900mHz phone had, not a bunch of contenders.(Update 4/29/13: Just remembered where I have heard these ring tones before ... as sample ring tones for a Motorola Razr Flip phone (remember them?). OMG, the ring tones are from the 90s!10. Nice to have feature: There should be a way to keep the handset or the base dimly illuminated at night so that you can find the phone without turning on a lamp since the LCD backlight times out. There'd be no battery drain if the charging base lit up because the base runs on electricity.While this phone has many of the bells and whistles you could want, I plan to exchange this for Panasonic Model KX-TG7745S because the handsets are larger, volume setting on the handsets has one more level than on Panasonic KX-TG7873/4/5, and the handset keypad keys are clear so the keys are illuminated by the backlight. I hope I like that system better than the TG7873/4/5. Don't get me wrong. The TG7873/4/5 is a great telephone system; it's just missing some features I wanted in a home phone. At least I didn't have the cell phone pairing problem noted above.
48 of 55 people found the following review helpful.
Great idea, mediocre realization, gets better with use
By J. G. Hancock
Edited May 30, 2013. Pushing up to 4 stars, simply because it's a great product once you get the hang of it, but there are still issues you may encounter that aren't intuitively obvious without having the manual at hand and/or playing with it for a few days. Also, the audible caller ID feature is proving to be both annoying and fun, and it may help in your decision.OLD: I'd give 3 or higher stars if I'd never used a Panasonic phone product. I'd give it 2 stars if this product was something I had no experience with. It's very good overall, but it sucks in the details.EDIT: I'd now call it 4 stars after some experience with it, but still, the instructions and all the possible programming problems you may encounter are concerns. Some reviewers and commenters have cast aspersions upon other reviewers and commenters who have pointed out issues, as if those with the issues are somehow not very bright. That being said, if you've read this because you're not that bright, you aren't the only one. Basically, what the unit tells you it will do out of the box isn't what it will necessarily do FOR YOU until you set it up.I bought the 4 handset version to replace an older Panasonic cordless array, based on the specs and the very few reviews I could find. For the most part, I'm happy with the units after a week, but caveat emptor: some of the claims in the advertising are a bit exaggerated and some of the instructions in the manual are either unclear or unhelpful, and I haven't been able to contact Panasonic during their help center hours to figure out if my solutions are the recommended ones (and you may want to consider this: I've tried to contact the help phone line and the online help more than an hour before they officially close at 9:00 PM Eastern--I get nothing). At this point, I think I'd be very happy with this product if I'd never used a previous version of Panasonic phone products, and I'm a bit irate with them since I have used those previous products. I'd still recommend it.EDIT: I did get through to Panasonic's help line, just to see if I could. They are slow, somewhat helpful, but seem to be reading from the manual, so if a lack of clarity in the manual is an issue for you, talking to them may not help.On the plus side: the sound quality of each unit is great; changing phonebook settings on one unit changes all the others; pairing with an iPhone is easy but with some funny issues not covered in the manual nor on the Panasonic website. This unit also doesn't have a problem with WiFi or microwaves for sound quality. The speaker phone is fantastic. The handset has no protruding antenna, and is fairly small. The keys are also large. After a few days, the basic operation will be obvious, and you'll probably love it.EDIT: This part is why I've rated it higher, and modified my review. The sound quality and inter-unit communication is great. Notifications on the units for an incoming call on a paired cell is fantastic, though takes some getting used to. Calling from the unit via hardwired landline OR cell is easy and works great with the paired cell nearby. And, recognition of the cell after pairing is very quick: the unit recognizes my cell when I walk into the house.On the minus side: there are quite a few things I'm annoyed with, the first being that the manual is required for doing anything beyond just shoving the cords in; some of the features and programming require you to reference the manual for either handsets OR the base unit; and some of the simple descriptions in the printed manual as well as what I see on the Panasonic website as of 5/10/13 don't help with the problems you may encounter. This product somehow combines user-friendly setup with arcane and tortuous fine-tuning.EDIT: nothing different here.FIrst: don't throw the manual away. There are many programmable functions that you'll only find by reading the manual, and its index is adequate but sparse. The Panasonic website information for this product is horrible at this point (5/10/13).Second: if you have an iPhone 5 (not sure if this is true for earlier versions): pairing via Bluetooth is easy (scarily so), and sending contacts from the IP5 to this unit MANUALLY can't be done. What I found is the following, which will probably only make sense once you get the thing:1. On your iPhone, if you want to transfer phone numbers to the Panasonic with MOST of the information, set up those numbers in your Favorites list on the iPhone.2. Set up the contact transfer on the Panasonic once the pairing is done; select AUTO for the phonebook transfer (since MANUAL doesn't work, or didn't for me as of this writing): allow a few items to transfer, then CANCEL it. Then, go back to your iPhone, and look under SETTINGS and BLUETOOTH. Find the pairing for the Panasonic unit. There should be a list of address books the unit will try to pair with. Deselect everything on the iPhone except the Favorites (where you've put your transfer data).3. Then, return to the #618 "phonebook transfer" on the Panasonic, select AUTO, and the contact numbers you put in your iPhone Favorites will be pulled into the Panasonic system.4. Then, even if you've followed the manual's instructions about setting up international, you'll find that the imported numbers probably don't include 1 in front of the 7 digit numbers you pulled in. At that point, you have to edit each imported number to make it dial correctly.5. My experience: even if you set up the international/country/domestic settings before import of the numbers, you'll still have to go into the Panasonic handset and fine-tune and/or change what was imported.EDIT: 6. You may not have the same issues if you have only one address book in your iPhone (I had 4, some corporate, some iCloud, some shared).Anyway, if you only need a few or a few tens of numbers pulled in, the mediocre method used by the Panasonic unit means you'll have to edit some numbers instead of putting them in from scratch. It's not that big of a deal, but it's not what Panasonic advertised.Third: read carefully and test the "benefits" like audible caller ID, paired Bluetooth text notification, and cell connections. These are all selling points, and can quickly become pains in the ass. You can change how the Panasonic units handle these things. I thought it would be neat to have each Panasonic unit notify me when I have a text message on my paired cell, until I actually did it. Turns out that can make you suicidal.EDIT: the audible caller ID is even more annoying (or enjoyable) if you get calls with strings of consonants or vowels in the caller ID name line, or calls from names that the phone recognizes but can't really pronounce. I'm leaving it on, just for giggles, since the voice announcement does some creative things with abbreviations and multiple letter strings that aren't simple words (e.g. a call showing up as coming from "ATT" is announced as coming from "at"; a friend whose last name is French was announced using some sort of diphthong-speak transliteration). I've found that such announced calls are more enjoyable if I've been drinking, and if you have callers with names recognized by the system who have names that include strings of vowels or consonants that sound a certain way using the correct pronunciation, you may want to use the audible feature just to see what it will come up with. I'd love to know how the audible caller ID works in Poland, Wales, or France.
See all 160 customer reviews...
0 comments:
Post a Comment