Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The AT&T CL4940 is a single-line speakerphone with answering machine functions and caller ID, which makes it one of many similar phones crowding the market. What sets this phone apart is the large, backlit, tiltable display. Why every landline phone doesn't have a display this nice is beyond me. Most everything else about the phone is typical, but it does add further functions to help those of us who are growing older: * A large keypad for easy dialing * A four-setting equalizer function to tweak sound * "Audio Assist" to temporarily boost receiver volume * Relatively intuitive functions that can be set up easily That said, one of the failings of this phone is that--for all its audio-altering capabilities--it does not have a rich sound compared to a cheaper AT&T phone I used to own. This seems odd given this phone's equalizer and Audio Assist functions, but the duller sound quality is obvious in comparison. Another quirk is the dial-back feature; there seems to be no way to program it to add a "1" automatically when dialing outside a set of local area codes, reducing the function's usefulness. If all those sound bells and whistles had worked as advertised, this could have been a five-star phone. As it is, it's okay, but that still makes it better than many phones out there. And did I mention how great the display is? UPDATE, Nov. 2016: Some have noted that bits of the display LCD start to fail, and ultimately, the whole display becomes illegible or completely blank. I have removed a star from the review for that reason. This progressive failure started in my unit about three years after purchase. That's ridiculous, honestly. Too many crappy small appliances and electronics nowadays.