Tesco Value TH100 Slimline Gondola Phone

A couple of months ago out of the blue our landline phone just died and although we tried to revive it, it stood firm and decided it wasn’t going to play ball so we had to order a new phone. As money is a little tight, we ordered one from my partners catalogue so we didn’t have to pay for it straight away but unfortunately the one we wanted wasn’t in stock for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t go without a phone for that long so I decided to find the cheapest, most basic landline phone I could to keep me going for the waiting period.

The cheapest I could find was the Tesco Value TH100 Slimline Gondola phone. It made me smile when I first got it out the box and looked at it as it is the most basic phone I have seen for a long time, but provided it worked, I didn’t really care!

This phone was brought from Tesco’s for the bargain price of £4.29 which to me is just ridiculous. I didn’t think it would even be possible to manufacture a phone at that price, let alone retail it! Having said that, this is about as basic as you can get so you wouldn’t expect to pay a fortune for it.

The phone is generally white with black buttons. Unlike most phones nowadays this is still corded as most modern phones tend to be cordless. I wasn’t sure how well I would get on with this as I tend to walk around a lot when talking on the phone but it was quite nice to just sit down and relax whilst on the phone.

The cord is a decent length though so the phone can stretch further than you would first think if you have it on a phone table and the buttons are a decent size and easy to press so although I was only using this as a temporary phone, a phone like this would really suit an elderly relative as it is easy to hold and lightweight too.

You get no functions on this phone whatsoever. You don’t get different ringtones, caller display, a phonebook storage system or anything that we tend to take for granted on most phones nowadays, but although you get used to having these things, apart from caller id I found I didn’t miss the other things as much as I thought I would.

One thing that did surprise me about this phone was the quality of sound. I half expected to get a lot of crackling and muffled voices due to this being such a cheap, basic phone but the sound quality was excellent and the voices were really clear which I was very surprised at. It does have quite a cheap and cheerful look to it and it does look a little tacky to be honest but then for £4.00 what do you expect! The phone is a little flimsy feeling too so I don’t think it would take much of a battering before it broke.

I have now replaced this phone with our new better quality cordless phones as they have now arrived but I have re-boxed this one and put it in the loft to keep as a spare as it turned out to be a much better phone than I expected it to be. Yes, it doesn’t do anything bar make and receive calls, but then that’s all you actually NEED a telephone to do. What you WANT it to do is a different kettle of fish but if you are happy just to make telephone calls on a phone, then this phone is very good indeed for the price and I would happily recommend it to all.