Cordless phones with expandable handsets?

[Hedy]

Anybody have those cordless phones with expandable handsets? We're getting a new phone+answering machine, and those phones look like they might be a good idea for us, but I'm hesitant to pay that much money.

 

[Katie]

Are you talking about the phones with an extra handset and base, that doesn't have to be directly plugged into a phone line.

In my experience, if the basehandset(plugged into the wall) is close to the axillary handset, things are fine. But, if the distance is significant, it doesn't work, or is full of static. I bought one of these, put the basehandset in our kitchen and put the other handset in my DS room...terrible, moved the axillary handset to the living room...it was fine.

Just depends on the distance between the two sets!

 

[kctwinmommy]

Yep! We got one at Costco about 2 years ago. It's got the answering machine base, which we keep in the basement. And then 2 seperate additional handsets with their own charging bases. It's been great! Cuz we bought them after we added a 2nd floor onto our house, so now we have a phone on each floor - wonderful! Oh, and the kind we got has it where you can listen to the messages from any handset. We paid about $100-125 (I know I had a coupon for it) and it was worth it!

 

[bicker]

I just saw one with the base station plus four satellites for $89 at radio shack. We have a vtech 1+2 and it works great, all over the house.

 

[ImarriedGrumpy]

We have one of those and we love it! We haven't had any problems with distance between the handsets and static. We did get a 5.8 GHz set so it wouldn't interfere with our wireless internet network, and that has worked well for us, too. The only problem we have found is trying to find additional extension sets to add more handsets in other rooms.

 

[diznygirl]

We have one. Did you know that the handsets can call each other? So I call from my bedroom down to DH in the kitchen and ask him to bring me up something to drink - it's great!

 

[rhanditresmom]

We have a set, refurbished, that we purchased from Frye's Electronics here in DFW. We have been really happy with ours...I think it is by Siemens; but our most frequently used handset is starting to crap out. We are looking at buying a new set, I think Panasonic. (We have 4 handsets, by the way.)

 

[azgal81]

I have these at my house and they work great! I don't really think they are all that expensive.

 

[kctwinmommy]

We have one. Did you know that the handsets can call each other? So I call from my bedroom down to DH in the kitchen and ask him to bring me up something to drink - it's great!

Oh I know! It's great! At least when my DH decided to actually answer it!

 

[diznygirl]

Oh I know! It's great! At least when my DH decided to actually answer it!

You have to pay extra for the little cartoon that pops out of the phone with a hammer and bonks him on the head!!

 

[iNTeNSeBLue98]

I think they are more affordable now than when we bought ours. Now you can buy a packaged set with at least two handsets for a third of what we paid for only one. We purchased our V-Tech about 5 years ago, when 2.4GHz was new technology. It has the speakerphone on the base, but not an answering machine. We only have the base unit with the one handset and paid about $150.00 for it. The extra handsets sold for $50-80 each so we never got an extra one. I really want at least one more handset and I'm considering replacing the one we have because the On button is wearing out. The additional handsets still go for around $40-50 on ebay.

 

[Magickndm]

We have a version from Motorola, I like it because you don't need a phone line for the additional handsets, just plugs into an outlet. And the intercom feature is great, no more getting up to tell my kid to turn down her music!
I think we paid $80 or so, but remind yourself you're getting 3 phones and an answering machine for that price.

 

[Hedy]

We have a version from Motorola, I like it because you don't need a phone line for the additional handsets, just plugs into an outlet. And the intercom feature is great, no more getting up to tell my kid to turn down her music!
I think we paid $80 or so, but remind yourself you're getting 3 phones and an answering machine for that price.

Oh, if it works it'll be great.

 

[golfgal]

We have some from Uniden that we have had for about 4 years and they are great. Any of the phones can be put in an charged in any of the bases. The phone/phone calling is great. We put in new electrical in our old house and we used this feature to figure out what was on each circuit breaker . I walked around the house to see which lights went off when my DH tripped the breaker.

 

[mmcguire]

we bought a Uniden 5.8 gHz set from Costco about a month ago for maybe $100 for a base and three cordless phones. Comes with built in answering machine, intercom system, room monitoring (like baby monitor) and can be expanded to 10 cordless sets. We LOVE ours.

The phones sound great and the intercom saves us a lot of yelling across the house for one another. DH uses the intercom it to wake DS13 in the AM so he doesn't have yell/go upstairs. After I hear DH call him, I flip on the room monitor for a minute while I'm getting ready, and if I don't hear him moving around, I ring him again.

 

[ducklite]

We have a version from Motorola, I like it because you don't need a phone line for the additional handsets, just plugs into an outlet. And the intercom feature is great, no more getting up to tell my kid to turn down her music!
I think we paid $80 or so, but remind yourself you're getting 3 phones and an answering machine for that price.

Sounds like our AT&T set. The set we have we could actually ahve ordered more expansion phones.

Anne