Pros: Fun features including: ployphonic ringtones, faceplates, animations. Durable, comfortable.
Cons: Short battery life, no base keypad, only one voice mailbox.
The Bottom Line: Maybe too gaudy for the staid grownups amongst us, but still a good-lot of phone for the money. Rated average due to short battery life.
I have the V-Mix with answering machine base, the same handset, but with a digital answering machine. I have to say this phone is loaded down with features for the price, but it lacks a few things that would make it "killer" instead of just good.
The handset has all the same features as the non-answering machine model, which is both good and a bummer. I love changing my ring tone, though I'm kind of stuck on the Quantum Leap theme right now... Uploading MIDI music to the phone through the USB adaptor and V-Tech software is easy and quick, I only wish you could add more than one custom tone, or add tones that are more than 30 seconds long... but I suppose at the price they had to draw the line somewhere. The included "Pop" songs are both irritating and fairly badly translated into MIDI. I have have used the internet and the V-Tech uploader to produce far more musical results. This is a cool feature, and one I wish more phones had, what with cell phone all having poly-phonic ringers these days.
The bummer is that there are no handset controls for the answering machine, you have to go to the base to check your messages at home (though you can check them remotely, more on that later).
The little animations are silly and most people will probably ignore this feature entirely, I know I did.
90 caller ID memories and 90 phone book entries is more than enough for most people, and the memory is non-volitile! (dead or disconnected battery doesn't loose caller-ID and phone book data) The display (and keypad) is well back-lit and easy to read. The function menus are pretty straight-forward and most average people should not have any trouble understanding them, even without reading the istructions.
The base has a full-feature digital answering machine and speaker-phone, but alas, no keypad on the base! Intercom between base and handset, but no conference capability. When you engage the base speakerphone the handset is cut off, bummer.
The answering machine section is exceptionaly well thought out and provides a nearly complete voice-mail solution, including remote acceess (with voice prompts so you don't even have to remember all the menu options!), voice memo, message speed control (allows you to speed up long-winded messages without skipping them entirely, or slow down that fast talker who left the message and call-back number in a single breath)voice setup prompts, day-time stamp, record time remaining warning, etc, but alas (again) only one mailbox.
Range of the handset to base rates "very good" but not exceptional. Interstingly the the phone can connect to the base and place a call from a very long range, perhaps as much as 700 feet, but incomming calls will fail to ring through to the handest at this distance.
As with most V-Tech products the build quality is rugged, if not as polished as some.
My only gripe with this phone is battery life. V-tech scrapped the monsterous old 1700 mAh square battery pack they used to use (I beleive this was done to save weight) and this phone only has a 400 mAh pack that seems to be built from 1/2 AAAs. What this means is that with all the flashy lights and musical ringers and animated displays the phone needs to be recharged much more often than other phones. In fact it's only good for about 8-14 hours off the charging base, depending on how many times it rings and how long you talk. This seems a little short and although I usualy hang it up when I'm done, if I leave it out all night and then fail to put it back on the charger in the morning, by the time I come home from work the battery needs to be charged before I can make a call. I'm searching for a higher capacity battery pack to perhaps remedy this issue, but havn't found one yet.
All in all, a lot of phone for the money with some fun features (did I forget to mention the changable color faceplates?) if it had handset speakerphone and/or a keypad on the base it would be near perfect. I'd also be willing to lug arround a heavier handset if it meant longer battery life, but I guess you can't have everything.
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