I too have been looking for a new cordless system. I've been doing a lot of opinion reading and have discovered the following:
- Lots of people like to complain, and most of the complaints seem fairly petty. Things like too small for my big face is worthless since we don't know if the user is normal sized, or is an offensive lineman for a professional football team. Bad reception can be caused by a bad installation (I put the base unit in the basement), or building construction. 2. When there are lot of similar complaints, you've got to believe there is an issue. 3. For every complaint or group of complaints you get one person telling you that this phone is the best phone that they have ever used. Are they real or are they a shill for the company? Is the good report really an outlier?
This said some of the results that are helping narrow the search are:
- Panasonic seems to have battery problems. The number of complaints on the Amazon site is huge and all are nearly identical. Batteries last only about 2 hours off the charger. Voice quality seems to be a big complaint.
- Vtech seems to get generally high marks.
- AT&T also seems to get high marks.
- Motorola voice quality seems to be poor.
- GE get high marks for battery and sound quality, but the caller menu is different for each extension, and is not alphabetized or easily searchable. Vtech and ATT seem to treat the menu of stored phone numbers like a good cellphone.
Now for my questions:
- Cellphones are available in 900 mhz, 2.4 Ghz, and 5.8 Ghz. I have read that the 2.4 Ghz phones can interfere with 802.11.x wireless routers. And I have read that there is no problem. Your thoughts or experiences? The 2.4 Ghz phones are about 1/2 the price of the 5.8 and I don't really want to pay for technology I don't need.
- Any recommendations on brand?
Thanks.
PS: Uniden phones are uniformally disliked for poor quality sound in every review panel I've seen. There seems to be a correlation between cost and quality (what a surprise!).