Customer Reviews

Panasonic KX-TG5431S 5.8 GHz DSS Cordless Phone with Answering System (Silver/White)

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

 

 

Everything about this phone was just fantastic (great, easy to use phonebook, nicely placed buttons, easy to use without ever looking at the instructions, downloadable ringtones - for a fee, small base)except that for the first 5 - 10 seconds when answering any call there was an echo - like feedback. Called Panasonic (great customer service by phone, however very slow to answer email) and they had me try several things - they didn't work. They said this problem was unusual so we exchanged the phone for another. Same problem. Ended up with a Uniden TRU8885 - so far it is just as good though the buttons are smaller and not quite as convenient.

I don't really use the answering machine, so I can't comment about that. The features that I liked that I used to pick this phone was the following:
- 2 line support
- Speaker Phone
- Mute button on both Handset and Station
- support for Headset

Each of these features delivered nice. The support for the headset has been causing me a few problems. People always complaining that my voice is to soft. I haven't figured out the "Voice Enhancer" feature.

I've had this phone for a week and so far am very pleased. For starters, I was surprised at how small this phone is and how easy it was to set up. It's very feature-rich, and the handset speakerphone was nice while I was on hold with a utility company yesterday. This phone has far less static than my 900 MHz cordless did, although voices sound a little odd when the Voice Enhancer technology is turned on (but that's easy to turn off). After using voice mail from the phone company for 7 years, I actually prefer the digital answering machine on this unit. Messages are clear, and it's nice to be able to press one button to hear messages as opposed to having to dial a number to hear them. And why pay for voice mail when this phone's answering system offers many of the same features, including remote message retrieval? In short, I'm quite pleased with this purchase.

I would highly rate this phone except for one critical flaw - the answering machine. My outgoing msg was only 15 seconds long but if someone called to leave a message, it would record only 25 seconds of it before hanging up. I called Panansonic to help troubleshoot but still experienced the same problems. I exchanged the phone only to find the same problem. I experimented by dropping the record time from 3min to 2min and reduced the phone book entries to 40 to see if it would make a difference. It did, it now records msgs for 1min 30sec, albeit inconsistently. I'm continuing to experiment to see how close I can get to 3 min because I really like this phone. If I see no improvements, I'm buying something else and am in the process of researching other models. Very disappointing as my "old" 900mhz phone worked perfectly for the last 7 yrs.

The recording quality for the ansering feature is very poor. The sound is fuzzy no matter how close or far away you try to record from the speaker.

This phone is pretty nice. It works well and has very pleasing audible tones. The menu system is nice and pretty intuitive but annoying in some areas.

But, it has one critical flaw. The remote access for the answering machine is a 2 digit number (no more), meaning that someone intent on stealing your messages could do so in 100 calls.

Worse, there's no way to turn it off; you MUST select a 2 digit number. In this age of identity theft there is no excuse for this pathetically-implemented feature.

That's what kills the phone, in my opinion.