Customer Reviews

Panasonic KX-TG5100M 5.8 GHz DSS Expandable Cordless Phone with Answering System

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

There are very few expandable phone systems that work as well as the Panasonic KXTG5100. I was looking for a 5.8Ghz system to get around the static I experienced with 2.4ghz phones and my Wi-Fi (802.11b) home network.

In no particular order, here are my pros and cons about this system:

PROS:

1) Excellent speakerphone on the base

2) Ability to pickup voicemail from any handset (don't have to walk to the base-station to see if you have voicemail). Handset visually tells you which buttons to push to skip or repeat the message. It also shows the message # while the message is being played back.

3) Handsets have Privacy features to prevent other family members from accidentally picking up the line while you're on it (handy if you run a business out of your home .. or you are a teenager and don't appreciate your parents listening in)

4) Speakerphone on each handset means mobility and hands free talking

5) Each handset shows if the line is in use before you reach for it

6) Ability to copy the phonebook from any handset to any other handset. This is a huge timesaver! I have all my phone number/contacts programmed on one handset. From there I can transfer the phonebook to each of the other 3 handsets in the house with a few key strokes. Amazing!

7) Bi-directional 5.8Ghz means that no interference with home networks, microwaves, etc. The base-station sits two feet away from the wifi router. No static anywhere in the house.

8) Easy to transfer calls from handset to handset (say you pick up the call and realize it's for your spouse. No need to walk around looking for him/her. Just page the other handsets from your handset and hand-off the call. All we need now is some hold music! (which, incidentally, is not supported)

9) Handset has a "booster" feature that can be turned on to get rid of static if you have walked more than 3 floors away from the base-station. Works nicely too. Too bad it can't be left on all the time.

10) Room monitor system allows you to listen in on what's going on in the room that the handset is in from a different handset. I suppose that parents with small children might find this a nice feature. Fortunately, it's turned off by default.

11) When playing back a voicemail, the handset shows the phone number of the person who left that voicemail (if you have caller id). You can then call that person back immediately, by pressing Dial. Very handy

12) If you transfer a call to another handset and nobody picks up that handset, the base-station will conveniently transfer the call back to you

CONS:

1) Handset distance from the base-station could be better. I picked up a little static when I was three floors away from the base-station. The static is easily removed by engaging the booster mode on the handset. Unfortunately, there is no way to leave this permanently set to on.

2) Handsets may be a bit larger than what home users may be used to

3) Handsets don't show current date or time (odd, since the base-station shows both)

4) Handset volume could be a bit louder. It has a nice volume range that you can change but the max volume is still a bit lower than what you need for noisy homes (either that or I'm losing my hearing)

5) The base-station can page all handsets simultaneously. This is useful if you need to page your spouse/kids and don't know which floor of the house they are on. Mysteriously, this feature is not available with the handsets. When using a handset, you have to page other handsets individually -- no way to page them all together. I have 4 handsets in the house ... this is getting old very fast. Fortunately, the base-station sits near my work area.

6) No way to give each handset a meaningful name ("bedroom phone"). Instead, each handset has a unique registration number (1 through 7). When I need to page my wife on the third floor, I have to remember that the handset on the third floor is registered with the base-station as handset #4. Not very intuitive.

Lastly, no phone with this many features would be useable without a good manual. This phone comes with a manual that is well indexed. You can download the manual in a PDF format from panasonic's website if you want to go over the features yourself.

I bought and tried three different 5.8GHZ phones available on the market... Uniden, VTech, and the Panasonic. The following is what I found:

Uniden
The Uniden looks good, but only performs decently. The handset is a bit big and clunky, and fairly heavy too. The worse feature of the phone is the ear piece. It sounds very tinny and not really that impressive for a phone of this quality and price. It's like talking to someone with a tin can up to your ear... all treble and no bass... doesn't sound natural. Probably the worse sounding ear piece I've ever heard on a phone.

VTech
First of all, it doesn't truly utilize 5.8GHZ technology... it's 2.4 one way and 5.8 the other... so this still can cause problems with outside interference and computer networks. The phone performs fairly well, but there was nothing that special about it's performance or features. A 2.4GHZ phone for more than $50 less would perform the same.

Panasonic
WOW! BY FAR THE BEST PHONE ON THE MARKET. I honestly found no flaws with this phone. Great range (further than the other two), never experienced static once, great sound and clarity from the ear piece, really nice answering machine and caller id features, very clear displays,.. the lists goes on. Just an all around great phone. I'm glad I tested them all out to see what was the best bang for my buck... the Panasonic 5.8GHZ phone blows the other 5.8ghz phones out of the water... it's not even close. If I hadn't tried them all, I may have been satisified with the other 2, but having tried the Panasonic, I wouldn't even consider the Uniden or VTech phones... they are mediocre in comparison to the Pansonic... yet cost the same price.

Go with the Panasonic... I love it. Best phone I've ever owned.

I've been reading reviews of various cordless phone/answering machine combinations here for several months. I've been very unhappy with my old Sony 900 MHz unit for various reasons, yet each new machine that I contemplated buying had quite a few reviewers who found it unsatisfactory. In looking for a new machine I needed a true 5.8 GHz phone that wouldn't interfere with my wi-fi network. Some of the 5.8 phones on the market are deceptive in this regard, using the 2.4 GHz frequency one-way. My other main concern was the audio quality of the answering machine. The Sony I've replaced failed to pick up the voices of callers who spoke a little softly. The first thing I did when I set this phone up was to call and weakly mumble a message. It passed the test. Frankly, I think the audio is not as good as the old machines that used cassette tapes, but I'm not likely to find one of those for sale outside Ebay.

The Panasonic 5100 has a nice array of features that should meet the needs of most customers and it's attractively designed. I will soon be ordering a couple of extra handsets for it. The manual is designed well enough to make the phone's advanced features accessible to any user who will take a little time to study it.

Overall, this is an outstanding telephone system. I purchased the base unit kx-tg5100M and one additional handset kx-tga510M back in June to replace a Sony 900MHz cordless that had chronic battery life problems.

Unfortunately I just had to write Panasonic customer service as within the last couple of weeks one of the handsets has started to exhibit an LCD that is barely readable (sometimes fair, sometimes not at all). The unit is fully charged and I have adjusted contrast, with only marginal effect. The other handset is still performing normally. The units are covered by a 1-year warranty so I'm not expecting any issues with customer service.

Aside from this as I mentioned, the phone is great! My highlights...

Pros:
-Great sound quality throughout the house and around our suburban 1/3 acre lot
-No interference with wireless network or other household

Cons:
-LCD issue as mentioned above
-Lack of Caller ID to programmed number matching on incomming calls
-My base unit speakerphone performance does not appear to measure up to that of other reviewers, I would rate the speakerphone as average to slightly below average, would be great if Panasonic would offer a configuration with a corded handset in the base as well
-Ability to copy phone numbers from base-handset, handset-base or handset-handset is great except that in my experience it is a copy only with no over-write capability. This is an issue in the case where I maintain the phonebook at the base unit and want to publish out to the handsets. If you delete a number from the base and then copy to a handset, the deleted number still exists on the handset. Short of pulling the battery and starting over (re-register, etc...) with the handset, I can't find a way of erasing all of the phonebook entries in a handset.

My (mostly minor) gripes aside, this is still a great telephone system. I feel that it still merits 4-stars.

I wrote some tips based on problems noted in other reviews as well as some items that surprised me after I got the telephone home. We had a nice telephone before, but this one has several features that we had not seen before. Here are some items, followed by the page number in the manual for further reference. I noticed that the manual is available on the product page. If any of these items seems very important, then I suggest you check the manual for more details.

SETUP

=>Although you can connect 8 handsets total, only four can be used as once. (page 24)

=>The privacy button, when pressed, prevents others from joining the conversation on any of the extensions to this telephone. (page 45)

=>You can copy all the items in the phone book to another unit. (page 38-39)

MESSAGES

=>If someone calls and wants to leave a message after you have answered, you can transfer them to a mailbox. (page 57)

=>You can check messages from the handset. (page 54)

=>You can erase all messages or just one. (page 56)

=>The light only blinks for new messages, not for all new calls. If you received calls, it says "received calls" on the LCD screen. The blinking light issue for all new calls was the only thing that we hated about our last Panasonic phone. I couldn't find where it talked about this in the manual, but I tested it several times.

=>There's only one thing about the telephone that didn't make sense. There's a button right next to the blinking light that lets you know that you have a new message. That made me think that was the button to push to play back messages. Wrong! That button turns the answering machine on and off, that's all. To play back a message press the number of the mailbox, 1, 2 or 3. (page 53)

=>You can set the playback speed to slow playback... nice for writing down telephone numbers. (page 55)

=>Stored messages are not affected by power failures. Messages are saved until erased. We lost our power for five days due to weather. When the power came back on, our messages were still there. (page 22)

CALLER ID

=>It's very easy to erase all the items in the Caller ID list or just one. (page 33)

=>If you subscribe to Caller ID, the date and time are set automatically through the Caller ID information service after the first telephone ring. I unplugged the phone, this worked. The manual does warn that the time might be wrong after a power outage, but we have not had problems with that. (page 17)

MAILBOXES

=>We don't use the multiple mailboxes and had some concern about that. As it turns out, that doesn't matter, the calls automatically go into mailbox one and we just don't use the others. (page 50)

=>You can password mailboxes 2 and 3 to prevent anyone else from accessing the messages. (page 51)

GENERAL COMMENTS:

There are several other features that we don't use, like the monitor function. I tested it, though, and it seems to work ok. When you call the other phone to monitor, it doesn't ring, but the monitored handset does say "room monitor" on the LCD screen.

The handset is longer than my old handset. So if I hold the telephone with the mouthpiece lined up like I'm used to, then the sound is faint. But if I line up the earpiece with my ear, then I can hear fine. Until I did that, I thought the volume was too faint. It felt a little awkward until I got used to it.

The manual is straightforward, complete, and easy to follow. There is a good list of troubleshooting errors that refers you to a page. Great index. The one thing that I don't like is that some of the methods to complete functions are slightly different on the base than on the handset. I basically only use the handset, so that has not been a big deal.

I bought this telephone because I have a wireless headphone that uses the 2.4 ghz frequency. I wanted to be able to use the headset while others were talking on the telephone. For that, it works great. We owned another Panasonic telephone. This one is much easier to use. I like this telephone quite well and highly recommend it.

I had the KX-TG2740S before I purchased this phone and I was not happy with it (see my review there), primarily because of the interference with other 2.4 GHz devices.
The KX-TG5100M has been a perfect replacement so far. I have no more, or very little, interference with the 2.4 GHz wireless video receiver and no noticeable problems with the wireless LAN. The video receiver and the access point are both in the same room as the base station. I have 4 handsets and love the room monitor, the intercom and other features. I can plug in a headset and go outside to mow the lawn while my 2 year-old takes his nap, something I was never able to do with a regular baby monitor.
The range is great - I still get good reception in my neighbor's garage down the street, a good 300 feet away.
I did not experience any of the battery problems that other reviewers describe, with either system.
Overall, I think this is a very good phone - if you don't have 2 phone lines.

I've been using this phone for about 2 years now...

And have been fuming about the cheap nickel cadmium battery for about that amount of time as well!

When I purchased it, this was Panasonic's top-of-the-line phone. So naturally, I just assumed that they had used a Nickel hydride battery -like my last Panasonic phone: the KX-TG2550S. I didn't even notice about the battery right away. But when I finally got around to opening up the back of the handset, I was *horrified* to see that NiCd label!

Since the 'memory effect' of nickel cadmium batteries is well known, using one in something like a cordless phone is inexcusable! This is because it will be recharged frequently, is usually never fully discharged -and is unusable when it is. [OK, so you can still use the speakerphone in the base, Gah! Might as well just plug in a regular phone!] Those that haven't had battery issues are probably singing a different tune after a number of months when the NiCd battery's power output nosedives.

And since I've had better battery performanace, there aint no going back!

There can be no other reason for the decision to use such inferior technology, except to save a few bucks. Or more likely, since a Panasonic replacement battery costs $20-25, to cash in because they need to be replaced more often.

[an absurd price because all the battery consists of -I took one apart- is 3 AA size batteries]

Fortunately, Energizer now makes a Nickel hydride [NiMH] replacement battery for this phone, Search Amazon for Energizer ER-P511

After reading many, many reviews on phones I decided to purchase the Panasonic KX-TG5100M and two additional handsets. I too thought that the volume was low, then realized that the earpiece on the phone is placed very high on the handset. Once I repositioned the handset on my ear, the volume was perfect. Unfortunately, positioning the phone so that the earpiece is where it should be by design is a little awkward; the top of the phone sits very low on the ear (unlike most phones, which cover the ear almost entirely). If you are one who has a habit of holding phones between your ear and your shoulder to get both hands free, this phone will slip out incessantly.

As for interference with other devices, most devices operate on the following frequencies:

900 MHz: Baby monitors and 900 MHz phones.
2.4 GHz: 2.4 GHz phones, 802.11B and 802.11G broadband wireless routers.
5.8 GHz: 5.8 GHz phones and 802.11A broadband wireless routers.

Unless you have an 802.11A broadband wireless router, this phone should NOT knock out your signal, especially since it runs on the 5.8 GHz band in both directions. I have a wireless G router and have had no problems with it whatsoever.

Some last quick notes: the handset speakerphone is exceptional, and the phones look great (although I'm hoping that they hold up better than the 2.4 GHz Panasonic phone that I had whose earpiece began to show a ton of wear from my wife's earrings). And as this phone has gotten much cheaper than when it was initially released, it is a great buy.

I'm very pleased with this phone, in fact I just ordered two additional handsets. I work at home a lot, and I needed a high quality speakerphone (with a mute button for teleconferences!!) that wouldn't interfere with my home (802.11b) wireless setup ... this phone fits the bill as it uses the 5.8 GHz band for *both* sending and receiving (unlike other "5.8" phones on the market).

Rather than repeating details already covered in the reviews below, I'll address a couple of topics from the reviews ithat caused me to think twice about purchasing the phone when I first read them.

The handset volume issue: I currently own an older Panasonic cordless phone which really had low volume, almost unusable with ambient noise, so the reviews stating this was still a problem really concerned me. However now that I've got the phone, I don't see what the problem is. It's plenty loud on the medium setting, and the handset speakerphone is even louder. The base unit speakerphone and microphone are of such good quality, that I suspect I'll rarely be using the handset if I'm near the base unit. So my advice is: if you have a hearing disability, sure preview the phone before purchasing, but otherwise don't worry about it.

The calling card problem: In the review on Amazon of the standalone handset, someone pointed out that the largest phone number that's supported is 32 digits. This means you can't program most calling card sequences because they typically are 1 + 30 digits + 4 digit PIN. This, alas, is true. But the phone is so good otherwise I'm not too upset about this.

Handset/base unit usability: Panasonic has made a decent, but incomplete, effort to make the same buttons do the same things on the hand set and base unit. There are some things done slightly differently on each, when as far as I could tell they could have been made to work the same way, but the oveall usability of this phone is so good one can overlook this.

That's about all I think is worth writing about - this is one darn good phone, easily the best I've owned.

P.S. to Canadian readers: Amazon's price is very, very good, in fact it's approximately 50% of the Canadian street price (Panasonic Canada seems to have very high mark-ups, you can check out the list prices at panasonic.ca)so it's worth it to find a friend in the US who Amazon can ship this phone to on your behalf.

I bought this phone in the store that I worked in, immediately after it came on the market.

Pro:

It is a very good phone. Very clear and quite good range (I've seen better but not too many). It has a lot of nice features like transferring the phone book from one unit to another. It has an excellent speaker-phone on the base and handset.

Con:

All my customers told me, and I have experienced it myself: very short battery life. It lasts about 1.5 to 2 hours in a conversation and I had to replace the battery after only 8 months. Now it seems that the second battery is dieing even faster.

Also, you can turn the volume on the handset earpiece to the max, it will still be low. We are mainly using it with the speaker-phone so we can hear comfortably. And we are not def. Trust me!