Panasonic Dect 6.0 Black Cordless Phone with Answering Machine and ChoiceMail (KX-TG7432B)

If you like its features, you'll probably like this phone a lot. It's the best I've owned during the past 30 years. Considering my own relatively basic tastes and needs, I especially like the following:* simple yet elegant design* large display, with large text and good lighting* a very usable speakerphone option* a dedicated phone book button and handy joystick design* a phone book that auto-transfers to all handsets* automatic sleep mode for night-time silence* generally easy programming even for klutzes like me* an answering machine with mindlessly simple operation* and most important, great sound quality and receptionBut I don't like these:* the lack of a dedicated ringer on-off switch on the handsetTo be fair, though, few phones have such a button these days.* the fact that I had to return my first unitThe first unit I received had a lot of background static and a slightly skewed visual display, but I'm glad that I tried another. The second unit has crystal clear sound and all looks good. If you notice either of these probs, I'd suggest trying another unit.You know, it's just a phone, but I'm thoroughly satisfied after a month's use. Great phone, fair price, and reliable Amazon service even when a problem arose. Can't beat that.UPDATE AFTER SIX MONTHS' USE: No surprises, no regrets. I stand by my review fully. In fact, I recently bought the 4-pack model for my elderly parents, and they couldn't be happier. They especially like its simple, attractive design and its large, bright display. What most impresses them, though, is the handy speakerphone option, which they use exclusively. For anyone with reduced hearing (or tender ears or busy hands), the loud and clear speakerphone could be a primary draw.UPDATE 5 YEARS LATER: my 2 phones and my parents' 4 are all still working perfectly. The batteries need replacement every few years with light use.

Jump to end if you want to skip the good review and find out why I ended up returning it.I'm replacing my Unison Dect 6.0 phone I got about 6 months ago with this unit. There wasn't anything wrong with the unison ones, they worked great, but i wanted to play with the talking caller ID and the call block features.Unpacked easily enough, put in the included AAA rechargeable batteries, and as it asked, let it charge for about 7 hours.Setup was easy - i never even opened the manual. Menu is driven with the joystick, which is hard to see in the pictures here, but is about the size of a pencil eraser (or, for you thinkpad users out there, same size as the touchpoint device on the laptop). it's recessed slightly so you don't have it poking your head if you're holding your phone between your shoulder and your ear.Menus are simple enough to use, and self evident. A few things are buried a level deeper than I would have preferred, but it wasn't hard to find at all, just an extra click or two to navigate deep enough.I love the joystick for adding entries in the phone book, since it makes it so easy to do spaces or push the cursor to the next space if you're doing multiple letters on one key (like M,N, or O one after the other in a name). This is by far the fastest phone book entry I've ever been able to do for a new cordless phone.My Uniden phones had a soft blue backlight when they were charging, making it easy to see the time even in a dark room on them - these are not lit at all unless you're using it, so that's a feature I'll miss, but on the other hand, it shows time, month, and date (i.e. 9:43 PM Dec 23) and it's larger than the uniden's display was so easier to read and holds more info at one time, so that offsets the lack of backlighting when in the base.Only other complaint is for caller listing for missed calls. You have to jump two levels into the main menu to view them, and so far I haven't found a "delete all" option.Caller ID voice is useful though, works pretty good so far, but as another reviewer mentioned, it doesn't take till the second or third ring.For those of you like me with VOIP but who want to use your local answering machine rather than the VOIP service's, the options for how many rings before the answering machine picks up are 2 rings through 8 rings, in increments of 1. So unlike some phones that didn't give you that low of an option (one of the ones I had before my Unidens would't go less than 4 so it could never be used for my voicemail) this one will let you work easily. It also has a toll saver option for if you check remotely for messages. And it lets you change the code and you can retrieve messages remotely then.Ringer selection is one thing I didn't see in the reviews I went through before buying it. And yeah, I know that's just fluff and not as important as the features but I'm a guy who loves songs for ring tones rather than just noise. That's where this one falls short. Only a couple songs, and while they are polyphonic, it is a real low end polyphonic. But unlike the uniden, the ring volume if you have a song chosen is amazingly loud at the max setting. I've missed many phone calls because i was watching a movie or playing a video game and never heard the phone that sits, literally, 2 feet from my head when i'm on my couch. This one won't have that problem.Voice quality is great, on both ends of the call. Speaker phone works very well also, great quality.The silent mode is more than I had expected. I just thought it was going to be some type of "mute ringer" but you actually program a timeframe you want it to be silent. So for my master bedroom, where the phone is on the opposite wall of exactly where my 6 year old's head is in his room, I have it set to be silent from his bedtime till we wake up. So that phone will never ring and potentially wake him up a few feet away through the wall. Much nicer than just on/off since I don't have to remember to turn it back on. You can also mute the ringer on the answering machine base, as well as turn off the call screening, so there's no noise there at all if desired.There's no need to transfer phone entries between phones, they just both see whatever you put in, another bonus above my unidens, where I always had problems and just ended up with the one I used the most had another half dozen more than the phone in my bedroom, since I never could get it to ever get the entire phone book transferred between them properly.A bit disappointed in the greyscale display, but it works, and you can make things show as multiline, or single line, so if you have poor eyesight the single line is going to blow away just about any other phone you've probably seen for readability.And as another reviewer I think mentioned, no way to "name" the phones. Just numbers next to the battery strength meter, 1 or 2 in my case, as I only have two.Phone book supposedly holds 50 numbers.Answering machine lets you decide if people can leave messages 1,2, or 3 minutes long. Handy as there's only like 15 or 16 minutes worth of recording on these I believe.If it weren't for the poor choice of ring tones (and I know, petty of me) and the fact that it's a few clicks in to be able to display missed calls, I would have given this a 5. But even at just a 4, it is a great deal and a great phone for such a cheap price.Edit on 12-25 after having it a few days:Just set up the return. I was using it today and was in the phone book. Suddenly i got a message on the phone saying to go plug the base back in because it was not plugged in anymore. Base was plugged in and powered just fine. Pulled the phone off of the base to check THAT one, and it appeared normal till I went to the phone book, then gave the same message. So I unplugged and replugged the base, and everything was back to ground zero, no settings, phone book entries all gone. This happened three times in the final hour or so of usage, so it's going back and I've already plugged my unidens back in. I'd rather live without the talking caller ID or call block than lose phone books and have it just stop working randomly...

These two phones work great for me! They are well built and I love the fact that each hand set has a speaker phone option built in! The LCD screen is easy to read and allows you to view menu items in multi-item page format or, for those who need the characters on screen even larger than the rather generous multi-item character size, you can easily switch to single item view where each menu item is displayed even larger and can be scrolled through by simply using the built in directional joystick control. The orange light-up keypad makes dialing in dimly lit rooms a breeze and the size and slightly bubbled out texture of the number keys is comforting. Signal strength and sound quality are good, but touch lamps seem to cause a crackling interference at times. Despite that minor issue, the signal navigates around walls and between floors just fine. The call block feature is very helpful. When a blocked caller calls, the phone will ring once and then screen will display "blocked call". The blocked caller simply hears a busy signal. The voice caller id feature is a nifty idea however the Asian sounding female computer voice doesn't seem to pronounce names very clearly which renders the feature pointless at times. - Thankfully the voice feature can be turned off if you wish. Caller id will show on screen who is calling in on call waiting which is always nice. However call block doesn't work with call waiting calls. The rechargeable batteries are conveniently AA so you don't have to worry about the fuss of searching for a specific model of battery. Despite the few minor picky points I noted here, over all these phones are well worth their modest cost and definitely get four stars.