You get what you pay for
Written: Sep 20 '04 (Updated Oct 16 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great reception and battery life
Cons: Lousy button layout and, from reading other reviews, no consistency in quality between units.
The Bottom Line: I find the phone's button layout to be abysmal. You'll always be at max volume and hands-free (shoulder-assisted) conversations will be interrupted.
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| jmclain's Full Review: General Electric 27990GE3 2.4 GHz 1-Line Cordless ... |
It seems like no two of these phones are created the same. Other Epinions.com reviewers have had problems with button functionality, batteries and signal quality. The talk button lately requires a more aggressive press than before but that may be due to input from my small children and I don't hold GE responsible in the least. The battery has always worked well for me and holds a charge *far* better than either of the two V-Tech phones I owned previously. I'm amazed at the range I can get with the phone as I can walk across the street (a major four-lane road) or a couple of houses away and still have fine reception. I'm quite impressed with that. I have no complaints about the quality of the outgoing and incoming messages on the answering machine.
I find it mildly annoying that you can't play back messages from the answering machine while on the phone. Sometimes I like to dial a number to return a call while the machine is feeding the number to me. Other times I've returned a call and needed to play back the message to refresh both of us as to all of the items we needed to talk about. No can do. Bummer.
One thing that irritates me to no end, however, is the button layout. They put the volume control right where it touches your cheekbone. If you need your hands free and cradle the phone between your cheek and shoulder, you'll be constantly pressing the "increase volume" button. It's bad enough that you end up on max volume but the thing that makes this completely unacceptable to me is that it beeps (loudly!) each time it's pressed. I'll be talking along and have a hard time understanding what the other person said because of all the beeps. Each time it happens, it kills what the other person says. Here's what the sentence would sound like:
I'll be BEEPing aloBEEPnd haBEEP BEEPtime understanding what thBEEPther person said beBEEPe of allBEEPbeeps. You get the idea...
I have three small children and don't like the idea of their talking to loud relatives at max volume. When I can hear the conversation from across the room and they have the phone pressed to their ears, it's a bad sign. And allow me to point out that the BEEPs are loud as well.
My phone has potential but the buttons need to be reworked. Seeing the variety of other complaints, however, I wouldn't trust that any other phone of this model would have any of the same characteristics except the same dumb button layout. Alas, this seems to be standard on many GE phones and I'd recommend investigating it before buying this or any other model. Panasonic has the control in the same place but recessed to avoid this problem. Methinks there's a lesson there for GE...
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
jmclain
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Member: Joe McLain
Location: Lompoc, CA
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 0 members
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