VTECH VT1421 Digital 900 Mhz cordless phone with headset
Written: Mar 04 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice physical design and lots of features
Cons: Horrible background noise, and bad headset design
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| eGnome's Full Review: Vtech VT 1421 900 MHz - Cordless Phone |
Kick Me, Kick Me, Kick Me!!! Why oh why do I purchase things without first checking the reviews on epinions? You think I would learn. I ran into the exact same problem that other reviewers of this phone had: horrible background noise/static that makes any conversation more than 30 seconds long just unbearable. I let my impulse urges take over though when I saw this nifty little phone in the store for only $99 and it had a lot of the features I was looking for.
If you’re looking to purchase this phone - DON’T BUY IT! PERIOD! You don’t really even need to read any further, but if you’re curious about other aspects of the phone then I’ll detail them for you.
The phone has a lot of good points which I will now detail, but remember that these are all outweighed by the single most important missing feature – acceptable voice quality.
Pros:
First off, this phone is pretty cool looking. It’s one of the smallest 900Mhz phones I’ve seen, and it has an attractive tear-drop shape that fits in your hand nicely. You can easily hold it and dial the keypad with one hand. The small size of it is also great when you use the headset. You don’t have some bulky, heavy phone hanging off of your belt. It would also nicely fit in a shirt pocket.
The transmission between the handset and base is digital 900 MHz, which is supposed to give you better voice quality, and also give you greater range and privacy. Although the voice quality is terrible, it doesn’t seem to degrade much over a pretty decent range. So I guess that’s a plus.
The phone has an LCD display on the handset which is used to traverse the menus and display the Caller ID. The LCD display is visible when the phone is in the base unit and can be easily seen because of two reasons: First, it is backlit so it lights up when a call comes in. This is great if you have the phone by your bed and you get a call at night. You don’t have to turn on any lights and blind yourself. Second, the phone sits upright in the base unit. This means you don’t have to be right over top of the phone to read the caller ID. Again, if you have the phone in your bedroom on the nightstand you merely have to roll over and look at it to see the caller ID. Although the LCD display isn’t huge, it’s large enough to display most caller ID names along with the number.
The other nice aspect of the base unit holding the phone in a vertical position is that it doesn’t have a very large footprint. So if you need to save space it’s a plus. The base also has a spare battery compartment, which functions as a power source for the base unit during power outages. Although the talk time on one battery is plenty for me, I could see the need for some people to want to have a spare battery to swap out if they don’t have time to recharge the current one.
One of the other reasons that I was drawn to this phone was the fact that it came with a headset. I don’t need to use a headset often, but it’s a lifesaver for those times when I do need it. The funny thing was that the voice quality actually improved slightly when using the headset. There were problems with the headset though that I will describe in the “cons” section of this review.
The phone does have a lot features. I’ll just list some of them here so you can get an idea of what it has:
- Multiple ring styles.
- Volume of ring separate from volume of conversation.
- Easy answer via pressing any key on the keypad (except Off).
- Auto hangup when placing the phone back in the base.
- Multi-level redial. It stores the last 5 numbers dialed.
- Flash memory (i.e. nonvolatile) for caller ID and memory dial records. This means if you let the battery run out you won’t lose your caller ID or speed dial memory.
I think that’s enough for the positives of this phone because they really just don’t matter. What matters is the horrible voice quality, and to a much less extent, the other negatives that I will detail below.
Cons:
This is the biggie: The phone has unacceptable background noise/static. You just can’t get past this fact. No matter how cool all the other features of the phone are, the voice quality just totally ruins it. Even the person on the other end of the conversation can hear the noise. Maybe it's due to the limitations imposed by fitting all the electronics into the small phone, but that's hard to believe with today's technology.
Some other minor quirks are that the headset plug cover is hard to open and hold back while trying to insert the headset plug. It also feels like it will rip off over time. The plug of the headset doesn’t snap in very easily either. If you wanted to attach the headset before you answered the phone you might not be able to do it before the caller hangs up.
Although the headset looks nice and seems sturdy, it always feels like it's going to fall off your ear and often does if you move around a lot. If I was going to keep this phone I would probably only ever use the headset if I was sitting still. You just can’t trust the thing to stay on your head.
The usability of the phone is a little awkward. You really need to read the manual to understand some of the features and menus and how to use them. I suppose once you find out what features you use and how to use them then it’s not a problem, but it’s definitely not a good example in human factors design.
There is no quickstart guide, which everything else seems to come with these days. Although the manual was ok, it was not great, and it also had a lot of added inserts. Presumably because they couldn’t get the manual right the first time. If you need to rely on the manual then these inserts can easily get lost over time and then you’re out of luck.
You can't adjust handset volume unless phone is on (dialtone or talking), which is mildly annoying, but not a big problem.
There is no indication on the handset when the line is in use. There is an in use indicator on the base station, but I find that not very useful. My old Sony cordless shows “Extension In Use” on the LCD when any other phone (or modem) is using the line. This is such a useful feature that I don’t know why it’s not on every phone that has a display.
Overall:
I like the design of the phone for the most part except the difficulty in menu usage and the headset flaws, but the background noise/static is unacceptable and I intend to return the phone. If VTECH solves the voice quality problem then I’ll totally change my tune on this phone.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
eGnome
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Location: Red Bank, NJ
Reviews written: 51
Trusted by: 172 members
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