Panasonic is a leader in corded/cordless phones for a reason

It used to be that I was the kind of person who didn't really care about what kind of phone I had, so long as it reliably worked. But after having a lot of problems with no-name or unreliable phone makers' products, I decided to spend a little more and buy a Panasonic telephone. Only thing was, I didn't know whether to go for a cordless or a corded phone; after much thought, I went with a corded phone for the following reasons: *security (no scan-happy people can listen in on your conversations), *quality (the audio doesn't begin to cut out due to electromagnetic interference unlike cordless phones), and *user maintenance/cost of operation (the phone doesn't require any batteries by relying an an AC unit to power the caller ID and no risk of failing, leaking batteries, charging, etc.)

I asked around quite a few retail outlets and Panasonic had the best rep among the stores and it also had the biggest presence, which led me to price shop for the best corded Panasonic I reasonably wanted to pay for. Enter the KX-TS620B. It comes with a limited one year warranty, black color, AC unit, instruction manual, and pretty much is ready to go out of the box, but I highly recommend giving the manual a good couple of reads to take advantage of the useful features this unit has to offer.

This phone is no weakling in the features department. It has a 50-caller name & # phonebook, a 20-caller memory redial, 3-caller programmable direct dial, 15-minute digitally-integrated answering service mode, remote code operation (you can call your phone remotely to check your messages), audio caller hold, speakerphone, desk and/or wall mounting, and automatic answering service (a kind gentleman's voice will leave a suitable message for your callers if you're not for it), among the standard telco features such as caller ID, call waiting, voice mail, etc.

After I got through the manual, I started saving important names and #s in the phone's 'phonebook' and using the time-saving memory redial for all outgoing calls. This phone will save you a *lot* of dialing for the fact that its IC memory stores all the incoming and outgoing calls. Essentially, once you've found the # you wish to call, pick up the handset and the phone dials the # for you. Any messages I got were easily retrieved, which makes me want to mention the audio. The voices come over so clearly and I didn't notice any real degradation in the quality, which can't be said for other phones.

As you can tell, I'm a big fan of this phone. My only gripe with it is the 'D-pad' button used for both the phonebook and callerlist. I found that when I wanted to enter the caller list, sometimes I'd instead be in the phonebook and vice versa. With a little persistence I mostly avoided this conflict, but it could have been avoided if Panasonic had molded four dividers into the faceplate a la the oldschool Nintendo gamepads. It's a minor thing and it won't affect the overall performance of the phone. However, but for this very little issue I would have rated the model a perfect five stars. It's good value for the money for sure.