Customer Reviews

ATT E5900B 5.8 GHz Cordless Answering System

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After seeing good reviews for many of the AT&T phones here ,I bought the E5900B locally. The unit seemed to have good quality build and a great features list. Unfortunately, I am returning it before using many of the features. The sound quality on the answering machine is so poor, nothing else could get me to keep this unit. I couldn't recognize my wife's voice on trial messages. It is overly compressed, like some Battlestar Gallactica robotic voice. It is worse than a 10 yr. old no name unit I had previously. I would rather have had 12 minutes of clear time than 25 minutes of this.

The handsets are good, with clear reception on calls. Range seemed acceptable, but not exceptional.

Like so many, I "over-reshearched" initially and then realized I would miss out entirely if I let every little "knock" on a particular model make a decision impossible. I was on Amazon for an entirely different purpose when the price of this model caught my eye, and I decided to take the plunge and not be distraught if a discounter 1000's of miles away had a slightly better "deal." I did insist on 5.8 Ghz and am very glad I did. I can "roam" freely throughout the house with no annoying "buzz." The speakerphone is supurb even when speaking with callers on a cell - very clear. I must now take the time to buy a third remote. My only regret is that I did not (yet) craft a central plan and make my ATT a "true" multi-line house phone. It is certainly up to it and I do plan to add at least one more remote line in the basement as soon as renovations there are complete. "Highly recommend - both Amazon and the ATT E5900B." And by all means DO go with 5.8!

I owned the phone for about a month. It has great features and is the right size, not too small like new phones from Panasonic or Uniden which I also owned. I believe that AT&T and Panasonic are the best phone brands available and here is my opinion on this phone and Panasonic KX-TG5633

Pro: Both has great sound quality. I use this phone with VOIP service and it is clear as a sunny day. In fact, people don't even know that I am on VOIP. The Panasonic, however has better answering machine, but the AT&T beats it with the LCD screen on the base and announces the caller ID. The AT&T phone has keypad lights but the Panasonic does not. The AT&T phone has an equalizer to change the ear piece sound to more high, low, or middle tones. The speaker phone is excellent. It is clear and loud. The phone also includes a belt clip. The Panasonic does not. The AT&T phone also uses regular rechargable AA batteries which is easy to replace and has more juice than the 3 AAA battery pack on the Panasonic. Also, the AT&T has spare battery on the base which allows it to be used during power outages which the Panasonic lacks.

Cons: The answering machine is horrible, I believe because it uses too much compression to achieve the 25 minute of messages. I just use the answering on the Panasonic. Also, for some reason, the handset says "Use rechargable battery only" when I put my own Nimh battery in it. The base does not complain. Despite this, the handset still works with but it is annoying with the message on the LCD all the time. The handset to base link is 2.4 ghz which may potentially causes interference with wireless networks, but should be minimal due to use of spread spectrum technology. I have not experience problem with my network but I notice some slow down when the phone is in use.

In conclusion, I think it is a great phone for the money.

Previously owned same system, wanted to replace it as we loved the talking CID feature. We can hear who is calling even if we're not close to the phone or extensions. No problem understanding message machine. We love all of the features. Had to search to find this model but was lucky at Amazon. The reason for replacement - storm caused power outage along with power surges. What a catastrophe! Love shopping on Amazon, they usually have it at the best price. Thank you.

I've had this phone for a couple of years at least and the batteries are terrible. I've replaced them twice and just leave it on the charger all the time now.

While returning this telephone model AT&T E5900B, I feel compelled to write this comment. Poor engineering has got to such sad point. I'm not sure if any of the engineers and managers responsible for designing this phone ever used it.

Blatant wrong design of a key feature: each handset has a separate phone directory which is completely separated from each other. There's absolutely no way you can transmit caller IDs from one handset to another. The base has its own ID list which cannot be edited in any way.

What's wrong with that? As a result of the flawed design, the phone book and the call ID of this phone are disastrously confusing. Because handsets pick up user names from its own phone directory, when a call comes in you'd have different displays of caller IDs on each handset and the base! And you can't do anything about it. How can you live with something like that in your home?

For a competent phone design, one would have expected that the registered handsets and the base share call ID entries in the phone book automatically. Even if that is too high an expectation, one would at least expect them to be able to do that manually. But this telephone shuts every reasonable possibility out. Worse yet, although the base does not even have an editable phone directory, yet it has its own caller ID list, adding to the mess.

Furthermore, if you are using VoIP services, often the caller ID is not recognized on the base but recognized on the handset if the phone directory of that handset happens to include the particular number of the caller. As a result, again you have confusing and self-contradictory displays on the base and the handset. So on and on.

And all these problems could have been easily solved by synchronizing the phone books among the handsets and the base. I don't think this is technically difficult to achieve. I think that the designers simply did not realize the problem.

That's why I don't believe the designers of this phone have ever used it. It's a shame they rush out all these new models every few months. What we need it a product that actually works and well thought out. Do a little bit of testing at least.

In addition to the above described problem, the overall user interface is not intuitive at all. I am usually able to quickly figure out how a fairly complicated telephone works without reading user manual. Not with this one. For example, there is no separate usual "go back" or "cancel" button. It is shared by the "OFF" button. If you have had experience of setting up a telephone, you will agree that the "go back" button is one of the most important ones because often you may have made a mistake and need to go back. This choice by AT&T is not understood, because intuitively you just don't press "OFF" button during set up. It just doesn't feel right, at least you would not have known that intuitively.

This review is for AT&T E5900B model. I can't speak for other models, but I would be surprised that the models in the similar series behave differently.

We recently replaced our old Uniden answer machine with this phone system and additional handset.

We have had it for a month now and so far so good! We were able to program fun ring tones and icons to quickly identify various family and friends that call frequently.(very cool feature)!