Great concept, but sound quality lacking

I was shopping for a phone for my office. I do computer support, so sometimes I'm on the phone for a long time while I need my hands free for the keyboard. There are many variations on the hands-free phone concept, but mainly you have your choice between speaker phones or tethered headset, both of which suck, in their different way.

Speaker phones are good for waiting when you have been put on hold, but only in ideally quiet conditions can you carry on a conversation. They are highly susceptible to background noise, and the circuitry which suppresses feedback also makes them essentially a half-duplex channel, that is, you can talk or you can listen, but not at the same time.

Headsets, on the other hand, are great for hands-free conversations, but you are tethered to your phone, even if it is a cordless phone. With most cordless phones, you can hang the phone on your belt and plug in the head set and walk around, but you end up snagging something with that dangling headphone cord as you walk around, and anyway, it's a hassle to wire yourself up when your already in the middle of a phone conversation and you decide you need your hands free.

So I love the concept of this RCA 25110RE3 Cordless Phone, because the headset is truely untethered, cordless. This headset is a completely self-contained wireless phone, separate from the handset. Light as a feather, you can walk around with no wires, nothing hanging on your belt, totally confortable. If you pick up a call on the handset and you find that the talker is getting long-winded, it's easy to put on the headset with one hand and switch the call over in the middle of the conversation. The handset part is as tiny as a cell phone, so you can hold it in the palm of one hand and dial with your thumb. Then you can switch the call either to the headset or to the handset with the push of a button.

So I bought it and I really love it, except for one thing. The people I am talking to will sometimes complain to me about the sound quality. I do work in a noisy computer room, with the with noise of fans and spinning disks and rushing ventilation air. Maybe it would not be a problem if you were in a quieter environment. My wife, especially, complains about my new phone. She is the one who knows best how my voice used to sound with my old corded phone, the one I replaced with the RCA, and she says my new phone is very noisy. She finds the handset intolerably noisy. The headset, she reports, is also noisy and has an echo, but is not as bad as the handset.

So in summary, I just love this little phone with the untethered headset. It's a shame they couldn't have made the sound quality better. I will continue to use it anyway.

This phone is marketed under both RCA and Thompson brand names.

Rick