Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We just bought and installed one of these, for use with a KX-TG6544B cordless phone system. The environment is an old wood-frame house, with a detached garage. The base is in the house, in a room facing the garage. About 30 to 40 feet between the base and the garage. Handsets would work in the garage, but got a little sketchy at the far end, and would go out completely on the other side of the garage (with the garage between base and handset). We installed the KX-TGA405B extender/repeater inside the garage, on the ceiling -- plugged it into the same outlet that a garage door opener was plugged into. It made a huge difference. Coverage in and behind the garage is now rock-solid. We can go at least another 80 feet vs what we could before. The extender has two indicators. "STATUS" lights steady green when ready, flashes green when in use, and lights red for trouble. The antenna/signal indicator lights steady green when close to base, amber when further away, and red when out-of-range. I found the signal strength dropped to amber from green almost immediately, but even with the unit quite a bit further away, it would still work. So don't worry if it shows amber. Indeed, I'd guess that the best place to position an extender is right after it transitions from green to amber -- just when the base signal starts to get weaker. It came with two different instruction sheets. One was worthless, the other pretty good. I think Panasonic must have issued an improved instruction sheet at some point. For whatever reason, Panasonic doesn't seem to have the instructions posted on their website, but if you contact tech support they will email you a PDF. These instructions say to register an extender to the base: Start with extender next to base, and unplugged. Press and hold LOCATOR on the base unit for 5 seconds. When we did that, something beeped, and the handset LCD showed "Base in registration". Then plug in the extender. It should register automatically. (The PROGRAM button on the extender is reportedly only used to DE-register it. You power the extender on while holding down PROGRAM.)