Over the last month it has become obvious to us that it is time to buy a new home phone. Our current ones were a wedding present almost ten years ago and lately have started loosing their charge when in use. Which is rather annoying when you’re in the middle of a conversation or important call! So the search is now on to replace it before it completely stops working.
There is so much choice now when shopping for home phones. The first thing to decide it if you want a cordless or corded handset. Personally both myself and dad of 3 prefer cordless home phones. Mainly due to the fact it means we can move around the house while using the phone which is always handy when you have a young family. The boys seem to instinctively know when I’m using the phone and start acting up! So having a cordless handset enables me to move around the house to find somewhere quieter! It also means that if I need to get to one of the children quickly I can do so without ending my call! ( especially handy if calling for advice when anyone’s ill).
The second thing to consider is how many handsets you would like. Will one handset be enough? or would more be more practical in your home? We currently have two handsets, one is kept upstairs and the other along with the main base station downstairs. Now this is where dad of 3 and I can’t agree, I’m inclined to feel that having three handsets would be useful especially as the children get older and inevitably start asking to use the phone! But dad of 3 feels that two handsets are ample. You can choose from one, two, three or four handsets on lots of models and if you need to add a handset at a later date you can opt for a model that enables you to do just that.
Once you’ve decided how many handsets you want it’s time to consider what additional features you would like. Would an answerphone be useful, is so you can now have answerphones with different lengths of recording time, ranging from a couple of minutes to around forty minutes.
Dad of 3 likes to have a speakerphone feature so that he can include us all if talking to other family members. I think it can be handy to have speakerphone so that you can use the phone handsfree if the need arises. Both of us like to have a good display screen on the handsets to make caller id easier. We also programme family members into the handset so their names come up when they ring. It means that if the children recognise the name of the person ringing they can answer the phone for us ( we only allow them to do this for immediate family only).
We seem to go through phases of receiving cold or nuisance calls. So having a home phone that has a Nuisance Call Block on it would be ideal for us. It allows you to block any number you specify and also any head string of 2-8 digits matching your specified number. This is a subscription service though which is offered by your call/telephone company. It’s a service that we’re currently thinking seriously about taking up.
You can even have home phones that will announce the identity of the caller for you so you needn’t even look at the screen. Again this does require signing up to a Caller Id service.
So there really is lots of choice when it comes to home phones. It’s just a matter of deciding which will meet your own needs. Dad of 3 and I are more or less in agreement as to which we will be buying in the next few weeks now.
This post is in conjunction with Panasonic but the content is 100% my own.