Philips DECT2154/4

Last month we changed phone providers from NTL to BT but only had one existing BT socket which was in our bedroom. Being fairly lazy, if the phone was ringing upstairs and I was downstairs it didn't often get answered. Even if I could be bothered to get up and run upstairs for it, 9/10 times the answer phone kicked in before I got to it! I didn't really want the hassle of arranging for BT to come out and drill yet another socket into my wall (I fear my house may fall down if any other perforations are made in addition to sky, broadband, old NTL sockets, etc...), so I decided to get a cordless phone that could come with me and so stood a better chance of being answered!

Not being very clued up on the latest technology I didn't really know where to start, I read the descriptions on the staples web site and got lost in all the jargon and so ended up going for the one that was reasonably priced and looked nice! My choice turned out to be the Philips DECT (not a clue what this word means) 215 twin pack complete with answer phone.

It cost £54.99 and was delivered by staples in 2 days. Myself and my partner were like big kids with walkie talkies, one upstairs and one downstairs paging each other!

So, down to the nitty gritty. They were dead easy to set up, the main base (the bigger one) plugs into both a phone socket and an electrical socket and the 2nd handset base just needs a plug socket (so it can be plonked in any room in the house which is good). They are automatically connected to one another so if one rings so does the other etc, the same as if you had it plugged into the traditional extra phone socket. It has speakerphone, paging and answer phone facilities which are accessible from both handsets as well as two 20 entry phone books (one for family and one for friends officially, we have put both our friends and family in one book and its still not full, cue violins!). If you wanted to add more phones at a later date to your system the are instructions as to how to do this and an extra cable provided.

The answer phone is dead easy to use and the display on the phone shows the date and time that the message was left.

The handsets are silver and grey and very lightweight, the bases are grey and very neat and tidy. The dimensions of the handsets are about 12cm x 4cm x 2cm.

The drawbacks as far as I can see are these;
~ It isn't possible to transfer a call between handsets or to listen in from another (or if it is I cant work out how and it's not in the instructions!).
~ There is no caller I.D and unless people leave a message you cant tell if anybody's rung you without calling the 1471 thing.
~ The phone books aren't connected to each other so you have to enter your contacts into each handset separately.

All in all, it looks smart and it does what I need it to and saves me stubbing my toes as I race upstairs to answer it!!!!