Panasonic Dect 6.0 Black Cordless Phone with Answering Machine and ChoiceMail (KX-TG7434B)

Comment: I really like this phone.
It is well made. The clarity is great.
The features are numerous, and intuitive and easy to use.
If you have caller ID, this phone is really useful, but without it, it's still a great phone.
The talking caller ID is not that great, but it is still useful.
The volume is, for the most part, adequate for me, and I am hard of hearing.
I have had several Panasonic phones over the years, corded and cordless.
Other brands I have owned, or that my friends own, do not come close to the quality of Panasonic.

The price and service from Amazon and Good AS New were excellent.
This phone was recertified. You couldn't tell if the box did not say so. Not a scratch.
The warranty is shorter, but by the time it is over, you should know if it is a dud.
Recertified products get more care than products off the assembly line, so are likely to be fine.
Or recertified could just be a store return or open box item that was inspected and re-packaged.

Comment: The Panasonic KX-TG7434 may not be perfect but it is as close to being perfect as a cordless phone can be. It doesn't have a redial button and the instruction book could be more clearly written but otherwise, it is loaded with bells and whistles which make it an awesome phone.

Because of all its bells and whistles, it is more complicated than most cordless phones. It is more like a cell phone than a telephone. I still have not mastered my cell phone but I have learned enough from using it to more quickly master the KX-TG7434. But it took a couple of hours to figure it out.

The instruction book does not explain the purpose of the two black and unlabeled buttons just below the bottom of the screen. The instructions call them "soft keys".When using the phone, two or three black icons appear at the bottom of the screen and they will have a different word depending on where you are in the process. At first a phonebook, menu, and redial will appear. I kept trying to navigate to those icons using the joystick but that didn't work. After reading the instructions over several times it finally came across that the icons referred to the soft keys and the joy stick immediately below the icons.

When I wanted to enter a name, at first I could not figure out how to enter capital letters although the instruction book showed that they could be entered, it just didn't tell how. What I figured out was that you have to go through the letter key a second time to get a capital.

It would be easier for users if Panasonic included an instructional DVD and a better index. Mainly, the user should use pages 20-22 to find out how to do things. Those pages show a list of 3 digit codes that can be used to access the many features on the phone. However, getting to them can be tricky. One gets the sense that all that is necessary is to enter the code and the feature will pop up for programming. Doing that sends out a telephone call however. To access those codes, the user must first press the joystick and then the # key. A script will appear to enter the code. A useful feature once you learn how to access it.

Great features. RANGE - best I have ever seen. We have a large house on a large lot. All the walls are concrete block and it kills other cordless phones we have as well as Wi-fi. No problem for the KX-TG7434. It covers our entire lot.

CALL BLOCKING. We get a lot of nuisance calls. Just highlight the call on the Caller List, press Select, Press Save, then move cursor to CALLBLOCK and press SELECT. Future calls will be blocked by a busy signal but they still will be listed as missed calls. Couldn't be simpler. Putting a caller in the Phonebook is just as easy.

SPEAKER PHONE. I used to have a separate speaker phone by my computer so that I could work while waiting for a caller, usually a tech support person, come on line and also talk with my hands free. But it wasn't portable. The KX-TG7434 is portable and allows me to use my hands anywhere I am located. My wife loves it when she is working in the kitchen.

CALLER ID. We had to be near our answering machine to hear who was calling with our other phones. Not with the KX-TG7434. With four phones scattered through the house we always get the caller ID.

WALL MOUNTING. Our other phones could not be wall mounted. Every base in the KX-TG7434 can be wall mounted which we did with two of the phones.

BIG DISPLAY. Originally, we bought another version of the Panasonic but we found the display screen was too small so we ordered the KX-TG7434. Very easy to read.

BATTERIES. What prompted us to buy a new phone system was that the cost of replacing the battery pack in the old system was so much, it was more cost effective to buy new phones. And it was hard to find a seller who stocked the specific type of battery pack needed. The KX-TG7434 uses ordinary Ni-MH batteries which are available almost anywhere and can be pre-charged. An 8 pack costs about $20, about the price of a single battery pack for most cordless phones but sufficient for all four phones in the KX-TG7434.

INTERCOM. The intercom feature is great EXCEPT that when the user has to select which phone to call, the handsets are only identified by number. That is meaningless to the ordinary user. I don't know where Handset No. 4 is located so it is hit and miss and a headache. Users should be able to edit the handset menu to put their own identity on the handset such as "kitchen" or "study". Also the handset give two rings. That happens also to be the same number of rings for our second telephone number. The user should be able to set the number of rings and perhaps the ring tone.

All in all it is a great phone. Some of the complaints I have read in other comments are either because the complainer does not know how to use the phone or they are either trivial or a matter of taste. One such complaint is that the Answering machine Base doesn't show the number of missed calls and other information. However, the telephone does show all that information including the time and date the call was received. I like the small base.

One suggestion for users. Download the PDF version of the User Manual from the Panasonic website. It is on regular size pages and much easier to use.

Comment: I was very skeptical about buying these phones as I'd always been a VTECH customer. I decided I loved the look of the phone and the talking voicemail which enabled me to not have to get up every time the phone rang to see who it was. The well lit background and large icons make it easy to use even in the dark. My 6 year old daughter loves how easy it is to read the icons so she can intercom from handset to handset, to find where I am in the house. The batter life has been great which was the reason I was looking for phones in the first place. I tend to leave my handsets off for days a time and have yet to find one that's been dead. Last night in a hurry to get out the door to dinner I threw my sheets in the wash not knowing one of my handsets was wrapped in the sheet, and then proceeded to dry them along with the handset again not knowing it was there. It wasn't until I took the sheets out of the dryer found my handset dead, nothing would light up. I decided to place it in the craddle just to see what would happen and to my surprise it light up, read "charge for 7h". Before going to bed I used my additional handset to intercom the one that had been washed and dried...IT RANG, I picked it up and pressed talk..I GOT A DIAL TONE! This phone is definately a keeper if it can withstand being submerged in the washer, spin cycle and then the heat of the dryer along with all the banging. Will definitely buy again!

Comment: Overall, I am very pleased with this phone system. I've only been using it a few weeks, but I like it better than the Panasonic system that it replaced.

The Choicemail feature is probably the coolest for me. It's nice to not have to listen to all of your messages at once. If you're like me, sometimes you'll want to listen to a message and save it for later because it contains details such as a phone number, etc, or maybe you're just not equipped to deal with it at the time. It's not uncommon for my family to have 3-6 or more saved message on the machine and, if the message you want to review is last, you have a lot of skipping to do. I also like the fact that, if I enter a phone book record on one phone, it shows up on all of them. The sound quality is really good and the range appears to be spectacular. Battery life is also remarkable as I've left one of these phones off the base for about five days, using it intermittently, and it kept a charge.

There are a few things that I would have liked to have seen Panasonic do differently. First of all, it doesn't appear that the caller ID shows up on all phones when it occurs during a call (call waiting). This was very helpful to me with my last system as my wife could be on a call and I could see when another call came in. I would also like to be able to review past incoming calls while another handset is in use, but this doesn't appear to be possible.

I would recommend this product to someone. In fact, I did recommend it to my brother just a few days ago.

Comment: Product works as advertised. Works well with Verizon Voice Mail system. The Message Waiting indicator detects the Verizon VM signal to let you know there is a message waiting.
I highly recommend this multiple handset phone system. Display is large and easily readable. Love the feature that tells you (audibly) who's calling. Once you have edited frequent callers into the phone book, the entry name is then announced when they call again. Love the intercom feature to call specific handsets directly.