Bought this phone from a local "big box" office supply store after considerable research, etc. to replace a dying Uniden 2.8GHz model. Features, range, sound quality, and so forth are OK. Even the curiously slow dial tone sequencing is tolerable; HOWEVER, cordless "talk time" is ridiculously short (<90 mins cumulative, when kept off the charger base) AND the cordless handset goes dead (i.e. drops the call & the display blanks-out) whenever a GSM mobile phone is nearby and actively sending or receiving. That makes it unacceptable for any serious business/SOHO use. Swapped it for a 2nd new unit within 10 days; it had the same fatal performance flaws. Panasonic's "customer service" lines (for all consumer products, apparently) are routed to a call center in the Philippines. That would be OK if the reps were knowledgeable and empowered to do anything but give polite lip service. They finally offered an "advance replacement" with a refurbished set, but without acknowledging the problems or any assurance the 3rd system would be any different. Declined. Panasonic was once a solid, responsive company; sadly, they aren't anymore. Panasonic DECT 6.0 2-Line Black Corded Cordless Telephone (KX-TG9391T)
This phone is a decent choice for a 2-line cordless phone. The corded base station is a nice plus and sound quality is excellent. Range is pretty good too.
However, for me, the negatives of this phone were a deal-beaker. The phonebook has no speed dial numbers and it takes multiple keystrokes to get into the menu to look up numbers to dial. Likewise, accessing the caller ID log takes multiple keystrokes to see the log. Both should be single key access from the idle mode.
The voicemail indicator is via text on the screen, not the light on the top of the phone so I often missed seeing waiting messages. It also seemed the VM detect was flakey as I often had messages and the phone did not display them.
The ringer sounds and volumes are poor. I use this in a office environment and the softest ringer is quite loud and there is only one normal electronic ring sound (bad design for a 2-line phone!)
Finally the biggest problem of all - the cordless handsets will randomly go "dead". After speaking about this with Panasonic they told me there may be a problem with iPhones or other GSM cellphones interfering with the handsets and making them go dead. They said there were other reports on the internet of this being a problem but had not concluded their study. Since I'm an iPhone user, I guess I won't be a Panasonic phone user.
Here's a video clip so you can see for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZU2Q516VFY
This product was a breeze to set up and the flexibility of the 2-lines in combination with the clarity of the DECT 6.0 standard makes this the best product in its class. The clarity is excellent. Battery Life is also very strong. The handset is tremendously light (almost cheap-feeling) is the only real downside. Just a minor gripe though. Overall a great phone. I will be getting 2 more receivers for the house.
It's a good phone now that we've resolved a couple of issues, but it was definatley a pain before we figured them out.
First, we were having a problem with the phones mysteriously turning off. Pressing the "off" button would power them back up, but that takes a couple of seconds and the phones won't ring, etc. We finally discovered that this was happening when setting down the phones next to one of our iPhones. Generally, within about 2 seconds, the phone will power down. In at least one case, it wasn't happening. I suspect it may have to do with the frequency of the base tower the iPhone is sync'd up to at the time. I would guess that this issue would happen with most GSM phones. As long as we keep the phones at least a foot from the iPhones, they have no problems.
Also, one of the charging docks, out of 3 of them, was initially only charging intermittently. It turns out that on that particular one, they forgot to solder a couple of the wires in place. A little bit of soldering and that was resolved.
Range, call quality, and general features are very good. I like the shared phone directory and the fact that the caller ID log is system wide. Other phone systems I've owned record calls on each handset and each call log has to be cleared separately. I also like that the system will sync date & time from inbound caller ID data. Answering machine outbound and inbound message quality is also good. All of the system components "play well" with each other.
Bonus points: The handsets use standard Ni-MH rechargeable AAA batteries, available anywhere, as opposed to a proprietary battery pack that costs $20 to replace.
Small nits:
You can't set a separate ring count for each line before going to voice mail. Some other systems let you set the number of rings before the answering machine picks up on each line so that, say, a business line gives you 6 rings while the personal line goes to voice mail after 3 or 4.
You must use the base station to record your outbound answering machine messages. I'd really like to be able to do this from the handsets.
You can't give the handsets a name, they're only referred to (and intercom-dialed) by number. My old AT&T phones gave me a list of names (Office, Den, etc.) when using the intercom feature.
The base station does not have a headset jack.
The base station does not have battery backup. I'd recommend a small UPS to plug the base station into, so that you don't lose phone service during a power outage.
Major goof: The base station and handsets allow phonebook entries to be categorized in groups. The system does not sync the group names along with the phonebook entries, so you have to program the group names on every handset. Even worse, if you do a "copy all" from the base station to the handsets (or vice versa), it puts everything in the first group, deleting all the previous groupings. Bad feature testing there, Panasonic. - Dect - 2 Line Phone - Panasonic Cordless Phone - Dect Cordless Phone'
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