Philips Cordless phone answer machine SE6591B Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I've been waiting for a 2-line DECT phone to hit the market and this one had all of the features that I wanted with the possible exception of a Bluetooth interface.
Likes:
- There are discreet keys for speaker and mute on both the desk unit and the handset. This is much better than trying to get to these features through soft keys.
- The voice quality and handset range is excellent. The DECT technology did not interfere with any wireless network devices and there was no interference whatsoever heard on the phone.
- The speaker phone and microphone quality were very good, although the speaker phone volume is a bit weak and needs to be operated at the maximum volume level to be useful.
- Having both the deskset and handset keypads is very convenient.
- The lit key surrounds are nice.
Dislikes:
- Not having seen one in person, I was a little surprised at the size of the unit. This is a very compact and lightweight unit with a smallish display and tiny screen text fonts.
- The buttons are made of a soft material but have smooth slippery surfaces that aren't as pleasant to use as most rubber-type keypads.
- The setup functions are rather clumsy in their execution, but otherwise get the job done.
Deal Breakers (for me at least):
- On the deskset keypad, there is an annoying delay from when you press the key to when the number is accepted by the phone. For me, this often resulted in dropped number entries and miss-dials.
- The keypad feel on the handset is OK, but the keys on the deskset felt cheap to me. My particular unit had two bad keys that you had to hit very hard just to get them to register an entry, but even the other keys had no tactile feel, which just compounded the delay problem. You can set a tone to sound when you hit a key, but the phone also plays a tone when accepting the number, so you have multiple tones per keystroke - very odd.
- When a line is in use from another phone in the house, it doesn't light up the line so that you know it's in use.
I've been waiting for this phone to become available since it was first introduced at the CES show back in January and really wanted to like this product, but unfortunately just couldn't live with all of it's shortcomings and returned it. Hopefully some other manufacturers will start introducing 2-line DECT phones soon, as the underlying technology appears to be excellent. My opinion is that Philips missed the mark on this early entry.

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Philips SE6591B/17 DECT Series 2-line Cordless Phone with Answering Machine (Black)

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