Customer Reviews

Uniden TRU8885 5.8 GHz Digital Expandable Cordless Phone with Answering System and Dual Keypads (Black/Silver)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am quite pleased with this phone. I have had it a few months now and I have not had any problems. I had looked at buying this phone on eBay, but I found it at the same price here on Amazon (once you figure shipping and everything). The sound quality is very clear, and the range is quite good. It does not interfere with my wireless 802.11g network at all. I have only a few complaints. The buttons on the base station are small and not laid out too intuitively. You have to clear the Caller ID info on the handset(s) and the base station individually. And the ringer on the base station has 3 settings; Annoying, Very annoying, and Off (The handset ringers are pretty good though). The battery life so far has been fine. I like that you can transfer phonebooks between the handset and the base station, and that you can check messages from the base station or the handset. I researched quite a few 5.8GHz phones, including all of the similar Panasonics, most of the Motorolas, and a few of the VTechs. And this family of Uniden phones (there are 2 handset and 3 handset versions also) seemed to be the best.

This phone is clearly one good-looking unit. I really like the orange-red light. Nothing outside of Uniden looks any better. And like many who thought this phone would be the size of an office phone, I was shocked to find out how compact this thing actually is. Even the box it came in was tiny. Just to put things into perspective, the handset dimensions are roughly 2"x6"x1.25." It fits perfectly in my hands. The keys on the base are a bit bigger than the handset's. It was fine for me.

I live in a basement and signal is fine through the sheetrock walls. To test the range to its limit I went outside and compared it to an old Panasonic 900 MHz phone. I found that the Uniden cut signal 10 yards short of the Panasonic. I had no problems with that but it sure makes me wonder if higher frequencies truly benefits the phone's range capability.

Many complain and scratch their heads as to why a 900 MHz phone had better range than some 5.8 GHz phones. Store clerks aren't any better in shedding light on the matter and only help to confuse customers with numbers. I've heard them tell a customer a higher number means better security and range. Rather vague explanation if you ask me.

While it's technically true that a 5.8 GHz phone would have a longer range than a 900 MHz phone due to the efficiency of shorter wavelength, it is not always the case in practice. You also have to consider antenna size and the transmitters power output. A strong transmitter on a low frequency will have better range than a relatively weaker transmitter on a higher frequency. I guess different cordless phones use different combinations of these factors.

Higher frequency doesn't mean it's more secure either. It's the digitization/encryption of the signal that helps to make a cordless phone more safer as opposed to analog. And then there's DSS or digital spread spectrum or frequency hopping that kicks the security up a notch. This is the information the store clerks don't tell customers or they don't know it themselves.

Back to my review. The digital recorder is top-notch. I don't hear compression artifacts like with another answering machine I used to have. The compression was so bad that it was hard to make out the message sometimes. This Uniden phone got the compression ratio just right.

So what could this phone improve on? I wish the base ringer can be turned down even lower. It can only be set to High, Low and Off. The Low setting is equivalent to Mid ringer setting of the handset. Other than that I love everything about this phone.

These are just my initial impressions. I've had the phone a few days. I'll have to see how durable and resilient this unit is months from now.

A friend of mine had this phone and I tested it out for two days the sound the range and everything was excellent. So i bought myself one. The only drawback is, if you have big fingers, this phone might not be for you. The keys are so small...perfect for my small hands. I would recommed this phone to anyone. The house that I live in everyone's conversation came through my old vtech 2.4 cordless phone....not anymore. I am happy with my purchase. I love the destinctive rings...so i can choose not to or to answer the phone by the sound of the ring.

I bought this phone especially for the Caller-ID Distinctive Ring Tones, so that I'd be able to pretty much screen out calls from telemarketers and wrong numbers, while taking calls from friends and family.

However I was very disappointed to find that this feature is available ONLY FOR THE HEADSETS!!! This would not be a big deal were it not for the fact that the ringer tone on the headset is much weaker than that on the base unit, so if you have your TV on at moderate volumes there is some chance you will not hear it ring. Why oh why can't the base unit offer the same exact features as the handset???

The choice of ringtones itself is pretty lackluster. "Beethoven's 9th" was the best, many of the other ringtones sounded all to similar to one another.

Also, with the base unit you are stuck with the piercing default ring tone, and there are only 3 possible volume settings: OFF, LO, and HI. Unfortunately even when on "LO" the base unit still drowns out the Distinctive Ring of the handset!!! Jesus what were these people thinking???

Lastly I was disappointed that the "Direct Link" option which allows 2 handsets to communicate with each other like walkie-talkies does not work between a handset and the base unit...seems like a sneaky way of Uniden forcing you to buy an additional handset!

I have to say that the user interface on the Motorola phone I bought for my mother was also much more intuitive, though the Motorola lags behind in signal strength, battery charge, and voice clarity. In particular, the layout of the buttons on the compact but overcrowded base unit seems totally without rhyme or reason.

Otherwise I liked the other features such as a 3-stage battery meter, a "Do not disturb" setting that turns off the ringer on all handsets and the base unit with one button, the lighted keys on the handset, and the convenience of having speakerphones on both the base unit and handset.

3 and a half stars.

I bought this phone after getting frustrated with the talk quality of other cordless phones. After much research I purchased this phone and I was not disapointed. This phone has the best talk quality I have found in a cordless model. It may not have all of the bells a whistles to suit every persons tastes though I believe it has an adequate feature set. Overall I am very satisfied with my purchase. I just ordered an additional satellite unit add on.

Absolutely one of the best in reception quality. Great phone with tons of features and a cool and refreshing orange backglow CID on the handset and base. Everything on this phones works wonderfully. We have owned ours for over a year now and have no complaints. The only limitation, as others have said, is that the CID and phonebook entries are not synched so you have to enter and delete them separately for the base and each handset, but small price to pay for great reception and a phone that works as good as this one. One of these days the 'experts' that design and make phones will realize that when you delete or enter something on one part of an expandable phone it should be a universal change across all of them, till then this phone ROCKS!

We did a lot of research about comparable phones before purchasing this phone, and ended up choosing this one. Our experience echoes the reviews below, especially the sound clarity. It sounds like the other person is right next to you! If you have poor eyesight, it is probably not the phone for you since the keypads are small, but other than that, it's a fantastic phone.

I just got this phone, so it hasn't really been put through its long term paces. I'm very favorably impressed so far with the voice clarity incoming and outgoing. However, like many other cordless phones that I have owned, the outgoing volume is a notch lower than my corded phone, and using a headset lowers it even more.

Range is adequate for most uses. There seem to be contradictory claims about these higher frequency phones. I think the tests that show higher range for 5.8 GHz or 2.4 GHz compared to 900 MHz were probably done with an unobstructed path between the base and the handset. In the real world the superior penetration of 900 MHz DSS has made it the distance champ. I can use the Uniden 5.8 GHz out to my apartment mailbox, but if I had to continue a call to the laundry room, I would need to grab my old 900MHz DSS Sony Hi-Power.

The phonebook is nice, and I especially like that it can be copied to additional handsets. My deceased Siemens 2410 2.4GHz DSS could not do that. It looks like it cannot be copied from handset to the base unit. It would therefore be best to first enter your numbers into the base unit, from which they can be copied to the handset(s).

Edit to above:
After I bought an extra handset I found that I can copy phonebook entries from handset to base. I don't know whether that caused the change, or whether I happened to be doing something wrong the first time.

I have had these phones in service for approximately a month and found them to be excellent. The features are good, plentiful and easy to use. They have good sound with adequate volume.

I'm very pleased with this phone and answering machine. It has all the bells and whistles one would want, but not so many that it's overwhelming. My only problem is that I can't seem to turn the volume down.