9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Tried The Rest - Found the Best - Uniden Tru8888!
Date of Review: Jun 28, 2006
The Bottom Line: A pricey, but great quality phone with amazing features and super sound and range.
I recently purchased a GE-25880GE3 5.8GHz Corded/Cordless w/ Answering System Phone from Circuit City. Within a month, I returned it because it was a cheap phone with poor sound quality and terrible design. (See my other review for details.) I only spent $50 on the GE, but I feel I got what I paid for, so this time, I decided to go all out and fork out the money for this phone.
Boy, was I glad I did. This phone was everything the other phone was not.
Let me break down the features of this phone and why I recommend it:
-The phone feels and looks like a quality phone. The cordless units are heavy without being cumbersome and the base is sturdy - corded phone stays on base nicely and the buttons are easy to push and in logical places. The orange background of the screens makes for easy reading of instructions, caller ID, etc and also looks cool!
-Manual is easy to understand so you can easily use it to set up your phone.
-Unit beeps when you have new messages so you know when you have voicemail. (Believe it or not some phones do not do this anymore so if this is important to you, this is a great feature.)
-Easy to expand to link up multiple handsets with a few simple steps on the base. Have a phone in every room!
-Great sound quality and range. The phone volume goes way up (unlike my last phone) on the base unit AND the cordless handsets. The phone also has 5.8 GHz so you can use your portable phones in the backyard, out front, in the garage, etc with no interference or problems. I have used mine across the street.
-The features on this phone are AMAZING...
CALLER ID and caller ID-Call waiting (see who is calling you even when you are on another call!)
ANSWERING SYSTEM with remote access (So you can retrieve your calls from off-site AND you can also check your voicemail from the portable units! This is by far my favorite feature because it means you do not have to go to the base unit to listen to someone leaving a message or to retrieve a message - you can do it from any of the portable phones.)
PHONE BOOK - add names and numbers to your address book and put them on speed-dial. You can even add a special ringer to each person so you know when they are calling just by the sound of the ring!
ONE TOUCH ANSWERING - You can set up the portable units so that you can answer the phone with the touch of ANY button. This is great for the phone in the bedroom - when it is dark and you are half asleep you can just push any button to answer the phone. No fumbling around.
CUSTOMIZEABLE PHRASE - OK, so it's not going to be that helpful, but it is FUN! You can add a a few word phrase to the screen of your phone so that when you look at it - it has the phrase. My phones all say "Go Dodgers" since I live in Los Angeles.
So any drawbacks?
Only a few, in my opinion. It is a bit hard to understand how to use some of the features. I still haven't figured out what "Room Monitor" is, but so far I haven't needed it!
This phone is missing one important feature in my opinion. I had a Panasonic awhile back that had a great "sync'ing" feature where you could sync the handsets with the base and your address book would be automatically added to the cordless units. With this phone system, you have to manually enter your phone book into each phone which is kind of time-consuming. For the price of this phone, I expected that it would have that feature.
The phone is a bit pricey at over $100, but as my last phone proved, sometimes you get what you pay for. If you are willing to spend more than $100 on this phone, I believe you will find it is well worth the money.
