Binatone Speakeasy 5

I brought this phone for my parents on the basis of it's speaker phone facility and large buttons. It cost £14 via amazon although you could probably get it cheaper if you shopped around. It came complete with 2 screws for the supplied wall mounting should you require a free standing set up.

It needs three AAA's to work and they don't come with the phone. I wasn't aware of this when I brought it which meant a trip to the shops before my parents could use it. I guess in hindsight I should of expected this because it does have a LCD screen built into the telephone.

The larger buttons are suppose to make it easier for people with eye sight problems etc to use. However should you want to programme your favorite telephone numbers into the phone address book for speed dial's etc you will have to use the 'little' buttons and depending on how many contacts you want to enter this could take awhile. One of the benefits of entering numbers into the phone is that you make calls direct from phone using the 'dial' button. You can off course use the phone without storing numbers and I imagine some people might just do that. The phone also has a large speakerphone button allowing hands free calls, very popular with my parents.

The phone has a red 'visual' ringing indicator at the top which I imagine would be of benefit to those with not so good hearing although to be prefectly honest the ring tone on this phone sounds so bad you might be tempted to turn it off anyway, Akin to la wasp on helium it became a bit anonying after awhile. I was hopeing there would be a choice of ring tone but alas only the helium wasp setting. Mind you......you will know when it's ringing, I guess that's the whole idea.

In conclusion......
if you can live with the 'ring' tone and don't mind taking a bit of time to programme your numbers into the address book (or choose not to use that function) and like the speaker phone facility then this could be the phone for you.