AT&T - 5.8GHz Expandable Phone System w/Digital Answering Machine - Black/Silver

This phone works very well in my home office, and I've tried a lot of terrible multi-line phones. I take calls all day long, sometimes non-stop. The included 2 line 5.8 Ghz cordless (used with a headset) is great when I occasionally need to be in other parts of the house or yard and still take calls. I found the distance range not as good as my panasonic 2.4Ghz cordless was, as I can't quite reach the mailbox at the end of the street ;) The buttons on the cordless for answering the 2 lines are small and hard to find when the phone is clipped to a belt. Wouldn't want to use this all day, but for the odd trip it's okay. For the wired base unit, I tried several plain headsets and none seems to have good quality sound, but functioned okay with the HEADSET button. What I found works awesome is a plantronics S11 wired amplified headset plugged into the handset connector of the base unit (original handset removed entirely), and just need to press the line 1 or line 2 button to answer calls. This is really better than the lift-the-receiver-to-answer that is required with most Plantronics S11 and phone combinations. This amplified headset allows much better volume/tone/mute control of most phones anyway. Pretty good speakerphone quality on this base unit. Lots of nice setup features for each line and mailboxes. Charges the optional extra cordless battery in the base unit, very handy! Intercom/paging to cordless works great, and finds the darn cordless when another family member has left it somewhere in the house :) For the price, you won't find a better 2 line wired phone with cordless capability that will hook up seemlessly to a quality amplified headset like the S11. If it ever breaks, I will try and find another.

Most elements of this phone have been fine, but when both lines are in use there is cross talk. Only happens when the corded handset is in use at the same time as the cordless or when the answering machine picks up. Doesn't happen when other phones in the house are used. Two service visits from the local telco found no wiring problems. When corded handset is picked up to make a call the phone always defaults to line one, if you want line two you have to select it. This becomes a problem when trying to separate business and personal calls between the two lines. Cordless range is disappointing, maybe 100-150 ft. It is not any better than other cordless phones I have tried. I live in middle of no where with no apparent interference so I expected better.

I don't think that this phone is very good, unless I just got a bad one. but I don't like much about it. It is not very comfortable when holding it up to your ear. I don't really like the ring and that is very important because you will have to hear it ring all the time. The quality is not near as good as other phones I have had or have.

I would NOT recommend this phone. It has given me nothing but trouble from day one. The quality for price is terrible. The extension phones are very expensive in comparison to other models. One of my extra extensions will ring, yet not allow you to pick up the call and I havent even had it for a year. Very poor product.

I bought this multi-purpose phone a couple of years ago for home office use. The good parts are the strength of the speakerphone, and the good cordless handset quality. The bad part is the corded phone handset, which fades in and out. I hate that. I wanted a corded phone for a stronger connection, not weaker. It is virtually unusable in a business context, because it sounds really cheap. On personal calls, it is merely annoying. Does this happens with all multi-phone corded handsets, or is it just this one? If I were phone-shopping, I would either get a handle on this aspect of the competing phones beforehand, or be prepared to march it back to the store immediately after purchase if you just can't find out in advance, which is likely to be the case. I am not sure any salesman really knows about the quality of the corded handset. Now I have to buy a new cordless handset, and see that it's $80. I have to make a decision to throw good money after bad, or just get a new multiphone.

I originally wanted a good office phone for my small home office. It needed to have a handset so I could walk around and a speaker phone for long calls. Not having great expectations, I thought this would be just fine. Think again. The microphone on both the base unit and cordless will occasionally not work. When? When you make a phone call or answer the phone. That's great when a client calls and you can't speak into the phone. The answering machine is so basic it's unbelievable. You can't skip past or replay the header and probably the worst feature is the "Call Screening". You cannot mute the speaker (great when you're on the cordless with a client and it just starts blabbing away (remember it's two lines)) There is also no way to send your calls directly to voice mail, so the phone just keeps on ringing... The clip for the cordless is so cheap that it broke in the first month and although you might not think that's a big deal, it becomes one when you're trying to keep the phone around you without having to actually CARRY the phone in a hand. There are more problems with this thing but I'm getting tired of writing. If you can get this phone cheap, and I mean REALLY cheap, then by all means go for it. Just remember these facts when it's plugged in and working.

Overall system is great!! Design and compatability is a plus!!

This is our home/business line. Imagine a caller trying to leave a message and they get cut off half-way through their message with a voice saying "Incorrect code, you must enter the correct code". The client is then cut off. This happens on 90% of the phone calls we recieve that go to the answering machine. If that's not bad enough, this is the second one of these models we have purchased. We had one for 2 years that did the same thing; got fed up, bought another one thinking it was just a bad phone. Six months later the new one started doing the same thing and has been ever since. My problem is I have spent so much on these phones I can't afford to buy another phone system.