When my cordless phones stopped working, after playing up for some time, I thought it would be relatively inexpensive to replace them. I wanted a trio set with an answering machine and headed for the internet to browse the different makes available. Crikey, they were more expensive than I thought for what I wanted - the price hasn't come down as much as I'd expected since I bought my original digital cordless phones. Most were around £80 plus instead of the £40 or £50 I'd expected. Of course, cheaper sets are available but I didn't want to give up some of the functionality I was used to - even though in all honesty, I probably could have lived without some of it. I couldn't believe for example that there are still digital cordless phones with only 10 or 20 spaces for phone numbers. If you think that most of your contacts might have a home/mobile/work number, then 10 is just useless. I was also willing to pay a bit more because we have bought cheap cordless phones at work and ended up replacing them because their range was poor and moving more than a few feet away from the phone lost the connection.

When I'm buying electrical items or phones, I like to know absolutely everything about what they can do so I can compare. Unfortunately, most websites just list the major functions, and some say that it can't do something when other sites say that it can. Very confusing. I'm never daunted though and I downloaded the manual to read through before buying, so I knew for sure. Sad, I know!

My fears about my impulse buy were realised when I saw it for real as it looks a bit plasticky and just like a child's toy. It's available in black too although this was out of stock when I ordered but I do think that the black would look a bit classier. My friend's first comment was, 'why have you bought a baby monitor?' followed by a fit of giggles. Others reactions have been a bit puzzled as to why I thought this phone's looks to be appealing but hey, it grows on you after a while.

It has a 255 name phone directory, clock, alarm, memo facility, secrecy button, handsfree, call screening, and 15 ringer melodies to choose from, 5 standard and 10 polyphonic. (Strange when the BT shop says it only has 10) The cool thing here is, like many mobile phones, you can select different ring tones for people in your phonebook - if you can remember which tune you assigned to them! Great for saying to my son - you answer it, it's one of your friends. You can, of course call internally between phones, transfer calls and page the other handsets too.

Yes, it does have caller display (don't they all if they have a screen?) yet again, some websites including Ciao, say it doesn't. Now you know why I downloaded the manual! It's also GAP compatible which apparently means you can add other digital phones to the base station.

SMS texting also comes with this phone, (you need to have caller display) but I haven't bothered to try texting yet and from what I can see, it doesn't do predictive text. At the moment, some of BT's call plans, e.g. BT Together 2 & 3 offer 100 free texts per month so it may be worth using if you are on one of these plans but otherwise, it was 10p a text when I last checked. It also allows you to set up separate user areas to keep your messages private but this means texters have to add the user area number to the end of your telephone number.

I mentioned it had a slider mechanism - my son took me in hand and showed me how to use it properly i.e. "see that orange bit of plastic that doesn't do anything on the front?" er, yes, "well push up on that and voila, it opens much more easily than the way you were trying"! Easy when you know how :) The manual says you have to open the slider AND press the call button (if off the base) to take a call but I've discovered that it works with either one of them. Makes you wonder who writes these manuals…