Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After years of living with my Siemens 2415, I had to replace them with a 5.8ghz due to interference from a neighbor's wireless network (so annoying). I was disappointed with the 5.8 ghz models on the market (big antennas and poor design) and was waiting for something upto the level of Siemen's, but tried the Uniden based on the rave reviews here. After a few weeks, I would say they are quite good with flaws. Good reception. Good design. They have all the features you could want. A big plus not mentioned elsewhere is the "do not disturb" button on the base which will shut off all ringers and call screening, perfect for napping. Plus all phones clearly say Do Not Disturb so you won't forget about it later. Orange LCD is very bright and readable (not my favorite color but you get used to it). Handsets are attractive. The Base is another story, not as attractive and buttons are really small and hard to decipher. Handsets are comfortable to use and you can easily adjust volume when on the phone. Caller ID on Call waiting is a pleasure as the name doesn't disappear as soon as you take the receiver away from your ear, it gives you a chance to see it. Also a nice bonus is being able to call screen on any handset even though it is done through the speaker phone. Retrieving messages on the Handset is also a good feature. Many Minor Flaws, the first is Caller ID. Caller ID must be reset on each phone and base separately. It will tell you how many times a number has called but then that info disappears after you read it once on that handset. Most odd. Keep that info and put a star next to the new Caller ID's instead. Time and Date must be set manually for answering machine and not taken from caller id. Answering machine annoyingly tells you what time it is when you call in first. Then tells you how many new and old messages you have, then repeats that info when you press the button to actually play the messages. Beyond redundant. Most bizarre is that when you retrieve message from the handset you press single digits, but when calling in from outside, you must press 2 digits, you must press a preceding 0. Ridiculous. You pick your security code but it is only 2 digits long. Again ridiculous especially in this day and age. Answering machine doesn't correlate to Caller ID so you can't easily see number of hangup or person leaving message. You must go into Caller ID and correlate the time and number yourself. There is no way to delete the entire phone book in a handset, you must delete each entry separately. Kind of dumb. The alphabetizing of names in the directory is also dumb, as non letters are placed in priority after letters. There is no easy way to force someone at the front of for example the B's with B1: Name B2: Name as I used to do. The only way now is by BA1: BA2: etc. Too cumbersome. And any symbol used is also placed after z for alphabetizing, so preceding symbols don't work either. Caps are the default when typing in names. So you must press button 4-6 times just to get lower case. Very annoying unless you like all your names in all Caps. You can't edit phone numbers without deleting numbers first, text however is fully editable. The ringers are acceptable but on par with the cell phones of 2 generations ago. Where are downloadable ringers or more normal ringers. And why do we have only low and high and off settings? Where is a midground of medium? The delay when distinctive ring is on is way too long. Phones light up and you wait and wait for it to ring. I had to turn this feature off to get phone to ring when it lights up. I would prefer a base with no buttons at all more like Siemens and everything in the soft menus. Also a higher price with more memory would be better. More minutes for messages and give me 100 memories for both Caller ID and Directory. I need 100 just for the phone book alone. Even with all these minor/major annoyances and flaws, the phones seem to offer much more than the competition at a fair price and in my opinion clearly the only game in town so far...