Customer Reviews

Panasonic DECT 6.0 3-Handset Expandable Digital Cordless Phone with Answering System and ChoiceMail (KX-TG7433B) (Black)

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I have had these phones less than a week, but so far they seem great. The main reason I bought them was because of the call blocking feature. I get so many sales calls that the thought of being able to block specific numbers from calling me in the future was a big bonus. (You are however, limited to 30 blocked phone numbers).
I miss the "Room monitor" feature which my previous Uniden phones had. (Being able to listen to what's going on in any given room where the phone is located.) These phones do not have that to my knowledge.
The talking caller-ID is nice. I can know who is calling without having to get up and see the caller-ID readout.
I have NOT used the built-in answering machine because I use the voicemail provided by Vonage. I have programmed these phone to call Vonage with my PIN number which is convenient. These phones will also blink when I have Vonage voicemail.

This is the first Panasonic cordless phone I have ever purchased and my wife and I love it.

Pros: Large clear display, loud ring tones, talking caller ID, long range and battery life, great sound quality

Cons: Volume loudness somewhat low (but tolerable)

All in all a great buy. Would have given it 5 stars if not for the volume loudness. I have always bought Uniden in the past and hope this unit is as reliable.

I looked at a lot of phones, and liked the features and price of this set. It never occurred to me that that these might not have a feature as basic as speed dial. I didn't see this mentioned in any reviews; I sure wish I had. To me, that is the single most useful feature they've ever added to a phone! I am going to return this if I can - none of the other features are worth giving up speed dial. From what I can tell, a lot of Panasonic cordless phones are missing speed dial also.

If you can live without it, then you might really like these phones. They seem to be very nice phones. The "joystick" was a little different, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. The only other negative I've found is the small number of available ring tones (7) - I like to set custom tones for family and friends. Probably not such a big deal with the Talking CallerID, though.

Big display, long battery life, great reception, intuitive controls, and clear reception. That about says it all. Not one ounce of buyers remorse.

Packaging:

At first I thought newegg sent me the wrong phone system because the box was so small but everything fit inside pretty snuggly. Anything of importance, the handsets and bases, were all wrapped in foam rubber sleeves and all undamaged. The cords were wrapped in your typical clear plastic. There was very little if any movement in the components and newegg shipped them inside a larger box filled with foam peanuts.

First Impressions:

The handsets were a bit slimmer than I expected but not so much so that it was a problem. These are replacing a set of GE Digital 28223EE3, the worst set of phones I have ever owned. The Panasonics stand a little taller than these but the bottoms of the GEs do bulge out a little bit probably to make room for the battery packs they use but that made it a little easier to grasp. Speaking of batteries, the Panasonics use two AAA NiHM rechargeable batteries instead of your standard battery pack and the engineers obviously took their time designing how the batteries snap in. They only fit in one way and unlike cheaper solutions the springs are under the backplate instead of seen. It's many of these small things that make this phone much nicer and easier to deal with, such as the way the phones fit into the charging stations. I've seen other Panasonics which almost fell out of their stations but these will not unless at a pretty steep angle. The front of the phone will not tip back and while the back will a bit they'll stop before getting to a point where they'll fall out. One other nice feature is that a soft orange LED (?) lights up when the batteries are being charged so instead of relying on the typical three line battery icon you can tell when these are fully charged. The only bad thing I noticed setting these up was the wire management on the main base. Instead of curving the plastic bit that sticks out to keep the wire in place they used a square cut. This is a small thing but if you move your base or have to mess with the wires a lot this could cause some strain on the wire coating which isn't very thick to begin with. Another small con, the screen has room for eight digits across the top, I wouldn't have minded if they shrunk the digits down a little to make room for the full number but if you have poor eyesight I guess this would be a plus. One other small thing, the power brick is a bit bigger than the GE, like twice as big. It isn't huge but it is big enough that it will cover two spots on a standard wall socket if you have to plug it in to the top. Which for me means I had to plug it in to one of the few red sockets I have on my power saving surge protector (the red sockets stay on when my computer gets shut off) because the wire from the plug for the surge protector comes out at forty-five degrees instead of straight out the bottom, still trying to figure why they did that.

After Seven Days:

Lets get the cons out of the way first, there is no speed dial, which my girlfriend does like to use but I don't so again nothing terrible yet. The size of the Talk and Off buttons could be a bit bigger, I did occasionally hit Mute before I hung up on someone, but I'm probably just used to the huge toggle buttons on the GE. There are a total of seven ring tones (three tones and 4 melodies) and all of them are pretty annoying. I stuck with tone 1 as it's the closest you'll come to a standard ring tone. The talking Caller ID is nice but it takes two rings by the time it starts to talk and a good percentage of the time it pronounces names pretty oddly. For instance my Dad's girlfriend is Japanese and though her name is pretty easy to say the phone really has a tough time with it, but again a small thing. If you do use the same line to receive faxes though the talking caller ID gets pretty annoying, especially, if like my set up, the fax doesn't pick up until the sixth ring. There was one other item with the caller ID, for some reason my line is the only line we've been able to replicate this on. My doctor's office Caller ID comes up as one of the doctor's name, so I get a call from so-and-so Willi (the am runs off the screen so it says Willy) instead of so-and-so Clinic. This could be because I'm using a phone line from my cable company though too but it's the only number that has ever done this. One other small item, these phones and their bases will show every bit of grime that comes in contact with them. Usually this is limited to the screen on most phones but not here, again, a small issue as far as I'm concerned.

The pros so far really outweigh the few small cons though. Let's start with my girlfriend's favorite and requested feature, the Caller ID list will let you erase either one name at a time or all of them. Yeah I don't get it either but there you go. The number buttons are big and responsive and seem to be made pretty well. The menu stick in the middle of the phone works really well and it's used almost like a mouse instead of another ripped off round directional key, ala many MP3 players. As I said there is no speed dial but the phone book works pretty well, hit the phone book button then the key that begins a name, say 4 for G H or I and you'll get the first name in your book that starts with a G. Continue to hit it and you'll skip to the next name in line within that set of letters or number. The voice mail is very easy to access through the handsets. I've read some complaints about the lack of a display on the main base showing the number of messages you have but I'd rather have the smaller base than a display and the phone will tell you when you have a message or missed a call. I've also seen some complaints about the quality of the sound from the handsets, I've had no problem whatsoever in this department. The phone is comfortable on my ear and the sound is very clear and loud enough that my girlfriend turned them down. No problems with any calls being dropped or a bad signal which I had constantly with the set of GEs. I'm not taking them for a walk down the street either but neither of us have and any signal problems. The battery life seems to be fine, I really should have taken the time to let one wear all the way down but I forgot to. So the longest I can say they lasted without a recharge was maybe 24 hours, sorry I can't be more specific.

One odd note, probably to make the menu look a bit better Panasonic included a Customer Support icon in the main menu. My girlfriend thought this was a cool feature. She thought you could just hit that icon and the phone would call tech support, good idea, but it doesn't do that. Instead it tells you the Panasonic help web site, [...], not really very useful and in my opinion a missed opportunity to really cement your relationship with your customer. Granted her grandma would be calling this number given the slightest reason but it would have been a nice touch.

Bottom Line:

I'd buy these phones again. I'd recommend them to anyone as long as they don't have any joint problems as the small Talk and Off buttons could be a problem. If I could improve anything it would have to be the included ring tones, tone 1 is not bad enough that it bothers me but some more choices so we could tell when it's either of our families calling during dinner instead of a telemarketer without the Talking Caller ID on would be nice. I'm lobbying my girlfriend to get that turned off, I work online at home and constantly get calls and faxes coming in so the uniqueness of this feature is wearing thin. One thing I didn't touch on, the build quality is very good all around and the designers really seem to have taken their time here. I do occasionally miss the larger rear end of the GE phones but not so much that it bothers me. One last thing for anyone wondering if the NiMH AAA batteries you already have at home will work in these phones, the included batteries are HHR-65AAABU 1.2V Min. 630 mAh. Sets are included with each handset but I was wondering when I had to replace them if the ones I have will work so there you go.

EDIT: June 2010 and these are still probably the best and easiest to use set of phones I've ever owned. My one regret is not buying a set of four because my girlfriend likes to take the one off of my desk and leave it on hers or do the same with the one from the living room which pretty much means there is never a phone in a cradle in the room I'm in... but that's just our little problem, excellent product and I still highly recommend them.

Great features such as audible announcement of who's calling and retrieval of voicemail from the phone. Well made and stylish

When I replaced my decade old wireless Netgear router with an Apple wireless router, I found that my wireless network connection would hang every time we made or received a phone call. My previous phone was a 5.8Ghz cordless phone and it was getting a bit tired anyway, and the sound quality just wasn't that good when I moved far from the base station. So a DECT 6.0 phone seemed liked the answer to both problems.

Having spent the better part of a few hours researching all the DECT 6.0 phones out there I finally selected the Panasonic KX-TG7433B (Black) with 3 handsets. The only thing I was a little nervous about was that despite getting overall good reviews, some commented on the plastic construction as being a bit flimsy or 'cheap'. But the other positive reviews and the features this phone offered convinced me to buy this product.

The product arrived promptly, and was nicely packaged. Everything was easy to get out and assemble and, in a few minutes, I was all set up. Having to wait 7 hrs for the initial battery charge-up was a bit of a disappointment as I was keen to test whether my problems were now solved. Oh well, something to look forward to when I wake up the next day.

The phone feels good in the hand. The buttons are big and easy to press and the screen is nice and large. Folks with big fingers and/or poor eyesight will like this phone. The plastic casing is lightweight and although it doesn't ooze luxury to the fingertip, its very sturdy which is really important for a portable phone.

Once fully charged I tested out the features and made some calls. The sound quality was excellent no matter where I was in the house (hoorah!) and my wireless network no longer hung when I connected a call. So both problems solved!

I really like the features on this phone. They are easy to set up and easy to use. The menu system, while not as intuitive as say an ipod menu, is easier and quicker to navigate than I expected. I'd rate the menu system as 4/5 for ease of use. My wife, who is not a tech-wiz by any standard, worked out how to use all the main features without referring to the manual or asking me for help, which I thought was a good thing.

The only minor gripe I would have is the rubber cover on the headset jack is a little hard to keep up while inserting the headset pin. This is only an issue if when you are working from home, you get a call and you want to plug your headset in quickly before answering. What should be a simple task with one hand takes a few seconds with two. But this is just a niggle from someone who does lots of teleconference calls for what is otherwise a great phone. Especially for the price.

It's great having 3 handsets in the house now as well compared to just the one. No more running around the house looking for the phone. Plus we can use the Panasonic handsets as intercoms now, which saves yelling between floors at dinner time. I also love the auto sleep feature where you can set a time range at bed time when you don't want the ringer to go off. This makes sure we and the kids don't get woken up from out of state or overseas calls that forgot about the time difference!

Battery life is as good if not slightly better than advertised. It would be nice if it could handle two days of back-to-back calls like some phones out there, but as I now have 3 recharging stations in the house, the phone is always being charged when not in use anyway.

Oh, and for those with oily faces, yes oil will get onto the phone screen so you'll need to wipe it down every now and then. But if you have oils, you are going to have to do that with any phone pressed against the side of your face :-)