Binatone I-DECT X1 QUAD

Background

We were on the lookout for a new set of phones as our old ones had seen better days. For some reason, my wife decided we needed a set of 4 so that we could have them placed strategically around the house so no matter where we were, we wouldn’t be too far away from one. We came across the iDect X1i series although, the asking price of £90 was far too steep for me. My wife, not to be beaten got onto eBay and managed to pick up a brand new set for what she described as a bargain £45. Personally, I still thought this was too much for a set of phones so I was very skeptical when they turned up at the door.

In the box

The box was reassuringly unopened. I say this as a few things that I’ve bought off eBay which have been described as new have turned out to be factory seconds. In the box were four neatly packed handsets, each with their own mini bases apart from one of the phnes which would connect to the master base unit. Also in the box was four power leads and an instruction manual which wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to follow.

Setup

Before we could use the phones, they needed to be charged. This was simply a case of plugging the bases into the mains and sitting each phone in its cradle. The manual recommends that each phone is charged for 24 hours before being used. If you think this seems a little excessive then that’s exactly what I thought, however, I found that with little or no charge, the led on the front of the phone would not even light up so the 24 hour charge was in fact required.

When we had power in the phones we could then proceed with giving them all an identity. We kept it simple by naming them hall, lounge, study and bedroom so we would always know where to return a phone to after we had walked off with it. Naming these phones was simple. We did this by navigating the phones menu on the lcd screen. Choosing letters for the phones name was achieved by using the up and down buttons on the keypad and then the right or left buttons to move to the previous or next letter. Saving the word was done by pressing the green call button.

The same method was used to record numbers into the phone. Unfortunately this had to be done on each handset. I would have liked the phones to have been intelligent enough to have transmitted this information between themselves. Setting the time on the phone in the main base transmitted this to the other phones so it wasn’t beyond Binatone to include this functionality.

At this point we used the menu system to record our answerphone message although, if we hadn’t the phone does come with a perfectly acceptable pre-recorded message for those of you who hate doing stuff like that (me included but the only problem with the pre-recorded message is that people will never know if they have reached the correct number).

Usage

Well it’s a phone at the end of the day, you press the numbers and speak into it, there isn’t really much more to say. The phone doesn’t have a texting facility which is fine by me as I wouldn’t have used this feature on the main phone anyway. The range of the phones is excellent, we have a fairly long garden and I can go right to the top and still have a clear conversation with the person on the other end. When an incoming call is received, both the base and phone ring which in my opinion is a good feature as, if you have left the phone in another room then you are still aware of the call due to the base bleeping. The volume on both the base and the handset can be set independently which is another feature I actually quite like.

The answerphone messages are very simple to retrieve, again, with most operations on the phone, the messages are accessed via the lcd menu on any of the handsets. I like this feature as previous phones I have owned have insisted on you being on the main base unit to listen to your messages. You can access your messages remotely but I have yet to come up with a good enough reason to try this out. I suppose if you are on holiday and are awaiting news from a job interview for example, this feature might be important.

The phones are also capable of making internal calls or transferring an external call to another handset. We have found that although this works, it is much easier to just pass the handset on to the other person no matter where they are in the house. This is because transferring to another handset requires you to know what number handset they are, knowing it’s the phone in the hall is not enough.

Verdict

These phones are quality, there is no doubt about that. I don’t however feel that they are worth the RRP of £90. If you can pick them up for close to the £45 we paid for them then I would seriously think about purchasing these phones but I would stop short of saying you should definitely buy them above any other product on the market. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these phones, but at the same time, they don’t really do anything out of the ordinary which I feel they should be for the price they cost.