Panasonic KX-TS880EX ( Hands Free Functionality )

Sent back

Very nice piece of kit. I bought it specifically for its hands-free speakerphone feature, because especially in these Coronavirus days I am more and more often kept waiting in call-centre queues for long periods, (up to fifty minutes once!), so I badly needed a phone I didn't have to keep physically holding onto listening for a human reply. I literally needed to get my hands free. This phone fixes that problem.I also like its speed-dial buttons for memorised contact numbers. All in all it offers three different concurrent ways to access frequently dialled numbers and the LCD display lets you store, see and search by real name.Sound-quality is clear enough, but only average. This isn't a super-duper expensive phone, but it's certainly not a cheap one either. I'd have hoped for a slightly better amplified, more true-to-life and equalized hi-fi voice quality in the headset for this price. It doesn't sound as good as my mid-range mobile cellphone.I would have given this phone five stars instead of four, but for two or three reasons that stop it being an absolutely perfect phone which is very nearly is:1. The connection cable is very short. Only just long enough at all to reach my outlet, and too short to be routed tidily. I have to trail it across the corner of my desk, which looks messy. For crying out loud, what would an extra yard of cable have cost them not to spoil the ship for a hap'eth of tar?2. The LCD display is too dark, especially for my poor old eyes. It really should be illuminated. I always wall-mount my phones because I am short of desk space, but in the vertical wall-mounted position not much light shines on the display in my poorly-lit office. Well, that's the design price you pay for a phone that doesn't run off a mains power adaptor, I suppose. But it does run on batteries: It needs three AA batteries in it to make the LCD function at all, apparently. I put the batteries in, that's fine, but for the occasional illumination you'd need for dialling and answering calls, you'd think Panasonic would let the batteries power up some LCD backlighting, it wouldn't run the batteries down very much faster, but they don't.3. I'm not very clear on how to cancel a phonecall that I decide at the last moment not to phone after all, or cancel any kind of operation? Pressing the 'C' button (presumably for 'Cancel) brings up a severe message asking me if I want to 'erase?'. But I don't, and I'm afraid of pressing it and erasing all my stored numbers and settings or something. The other option is to press the Hands-Free button. That seems to work as a canceller, but seems a bit of a cack-handed method: I'd sooner just keep the Hands-Free for only what it's made for, ie ,hands-free stuff, and not overuse it and wear out the button by using it as an instruction canceller as well. The other option is to lift and replace the handset to cancel an operation. That works like a charm, but with all the built-in electronic sophistication in this unit, it's ironic that to be absolutely sure of cancelling an operation I have to crudely and physically lift the handset. I was using a hands-free office phone over thirty years ago, and that one had a perfectly straightforward and logical cancellation button. Why not this one? Why are we going backwards in simple common-sense ergonomics, instead of forwards?I'll end on a positive note: My previous phone was also a Panasonic, a cheaper, simpler model, and when I took it off the wall to replace it with this one, I found that both phones had the same size and position of their mounting bracket holes, a vertical 8.3mm apart arrangement, so I did not have to re-drill the wall for newly positioned wall screws, ie a major inconvenience averted, so top marks to Panasonic for design compatibility consistency across their range in that respect. It's something you don't see very often these days. I've always liked Panasonic ever since they used to call themselves 'National Panasonic' and advertised themselves in the 1960's with a very cool-looking Space-Age woman wearing a pair of headphones with dual antennae coming out of them. I own a lot of Panasonic stuff. I never set out deliberately to buy Panasonic, but when shopping for sound gear and drilling down on Amazon I nearly always seem to end up finding their products on my shortlist or final choice as best reliable value and quality for a reasonable price, and their stuff always looks good too. The Panasonic KX-TS880EX is not perfect, but I nevertheless recommend it as a good all-rounder hands-free phone with all the features most people would ever need, and it also worked straight out of the box with no glitches.

very happy with the product's quality.Leaflet of instruction unhelpful.unable to programme it.

Way too compilcated with little symbols that mean nothing. This could be overlooked but the constant buzzing while on a call could not. Tried moving the phone and made sure the ferrite core was on the cable but no luck. On the positive side it seemed well made, the display was clear and it might be down to my cable runs but the old cable & wireless CTW2000 power has no problems.