Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm ever on the search for the ideal home office phone with DECT for whole-house coverage. Unfortunately, there are a few disappointing dealbreakers to this phone- see Con's. I REALLY wanted to keep it, but this is not the one. :( Pro's: -- Large, responsive buttons. Easy to read white text on black buttons. The base form factor is excellent. Wall mountable base and accessory handset charger. -- Base station speaker is high quality- great sounding voicemail recording playback. *Note, this does not include the mic (see Con's). -- Bluetooth pairing with my Samsung Galaxy S4 was extremely easy. Quick visual indication of connected phones along with dedicated hard buttons to access each device. -- The GS4 consistently automatically connects via BT to the base as expected. Good range, too. Voice quality over Link2Mobile is clear. -- You can dial a phone number on the base and have the call go through your cell phone. If you start a call on your cell phone you can easily transfer the call to the base by pressing the corresponding "Cell" button. Link2Mobile call handoff was intuitive and worked great. -- Dedicated indicator lights to let you know someone else is using a specific line. Phone automatically switches to the unused line when you attempt to use it. -- You can link up to 4 cell phones to this system. Note, it's only easy to select between 4 cell phones while at the base station. -- The handsets use standard AAA size Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. Con's: -- This phone does NOT have a full-duplex speakerphone. A full duplex speakerphone is the minimum requirement for sounding professional on business calls, therefore this phone is unacceptable. Panasonic phones generally have this feature; however, this phone unfortunately does not. I contacted Panasonic and they confirmed my issues with the speakerphone mic cutting out due to the half-duplex speakerphone. (See the RCA 25216RE1 for quality full-duplex calls on a 2-line phone with cellular Bluetooth capabilities.) -- The base station can only do speakerphone OR wired headset. Since Panasonic does not manufacture a DECT headset, I'm forced to use a third-party Plantronics DECT headset that must be plugged into the 2.5mm headset jack on the base station. I quickly found out that if I want to switch from headset to speakerphone it will require unplugging the headset wire. This is unacceptable. It should be a simple button press to switch between headset and speakerphone like it is on every other phone. -- Phonebook download only works for contacts that are stored "on-device". This means if you keep your contacts saved with a profile, e.g. your Google account, the "Automatic phonebook download" can't access them. I also tried a "Manual phonebook download" by pushing my Google contacts list from my Galaxy S4 to this Panasonic and that didn't work either. Huge failure. The problem with saving your contacts on-device storage means they don't get backed up or synced and contacts can get "lost". So, now I generally have no idea who's calling- who remembers phone numbers anymore? -- Missing a dedicated mute button. The mute button winds up being a soft button under the main screen during a call. The soft buttons are smaller and all-black, making hitting them less than quick and easy to depress if your office lights are off or you're fumbling around when your dog starts barking in the middle of a business call because UPS just delivered you some packages. -- No "do not disturb" (DND) button. Very disturbing! If I'm on an important call and another call comes in over my phone or other line, the base station doesn't shut up. It continues to ring and call out the number... LOUD, too. There is no intuitive way to silence it during a call or otherwise. -- The accessory handsets have no LED indicator for a voicemail alert. You have no idea if there's a message waiting for you unless you specifically make a point to regularly check the base station. Other Thoughts: -- Current limited availability (Feb '14) of expandable handsets... and extreme costs for the ones that are available. This is currently only sold in a base station version, or base station plus one accessory handset. I need at least one to two more handsets and wish this came in a bundled set like other Panasonic models. -- Make the Redial and Erase buttons soft and the Mute and DND hard buttons instead. -- I like dedicated speed dial buttons with an optional card to write down info for the contact the button is assigned.