Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic KX-TSC55B 2-Line Conferencing Phone with Jog Dial and Caller ID

I got this phone for my home office; I bought a quality "Hello Direct" headset (and 6' extension) to go with it. It's really worked out great. I've had many phones, both personal and PBX-quality, but this one is the best. My previous home business phone was a $99 AT&T model... it was nowhere near the quality of this Panasonic model. Both the handset and speakerphone are "hi-fi" compared to other phones.

It really shines with it's headset capability (such a beautiful thing when you work at a keyboard for a living). Also, there's no need for an external amplifier, like some phones. (Although I do work in a quiet home office, so a loud environment would probably require the amp... I often have the volume at max, which works fine for me.)

Using it to store numbers, review caller ID calls, redials, etc. is a little tricky, but no worse than any other business phone.

It handles 2 lines well, with all the business features you'd expect. For example, it has a voice mail light that indicates when your voice mail (purchased from your local phone company) has new messages. You can program that button to automatically dial your voice mail, and even type in your password (adding some "pause" spacers after your voice mail access number). It's really convenient to press one button, then pick up the line (or hit speakerphone) and get your messages.

My biggest complain (and it cost a star!) is that there's no mute button. There is a "hold" button, but this also cuts your audio so you can't listen, so I never use it. The problem has made some conference calls a little awkward, especially when my wife is yelling for me from across the house. :-(
If I ever get the time I may try taking apart the phone to add a toggle switch to cut out the microphone when on speaker... but obviously that's not a fun project, or something Panasonic should expect of a consumer.

In case you didn't realize, this phone has to be plugged into an electrical outlet too (with a usual clumbsy AC adapter). Luckily the phone remembers all settings and phone numbers if you lose power, and it still works as a plain phone while power is out. No batteries.

The designers added a lot of human-engineered common sense features such as auto-selecting the ringing line when you pick up the handset. Also, when one line is in use elsewhere and you pick up the handset, the phone selects the unused line. The buttons are large and well-labeled. The Voice Mail lamp works well.

Caller ID has a quirk, though. Ocassionally, when the first ring is brief, it does not display the Caller ID. I have to go to another (different brand) phone I have in another room to look at the Caller ID. The Caller ID was in fact received; you can find it in the log. However, you can't get to the log via the Jog Dial while the phone is still ringing.

As others have noted this phone has many well thought-out features.

I particularly like the flashing light/button that announces whether our phone-company supplied voice-mail has any new messages and can dial directly in to pick up our messages.

I find the display is hard to read - it really does need a back-light, and I need to have fairly strong office lighting on in order to read it.

However, the most significant day-to-day problem is that (as the technical-details link shows) the speaker-phone does not have a Mute feature.

This makes using the speaker phone problematic.
Most of the speaker-phone scenarios that I run into require an easily accessed mute function.

Finally, there are 8 levels of speaker-phone volume, but the 4 highest levels are too way too loud - the entire plastic housing buzzes and vibrates with the dial-tone.

If only Panasonic had made the lowest volume setting into 'Mute' they wouldn't have needed to add an additional button and they could have done away with the (useless) highest volume setting.

If I was going to do it again, I'd buy a different desk/speaker phone.

Very good phone. The intreface is as good as usually every Panasonic product. There are bunch of usefull features, like choosing the open line when one of lines is busy, "voicemail" light blinking for phone company voicemail and big memory.

Fonts are very big and very easy to read.

You should be very happy with this purchase.

Good features , the jog dial and the voice mail alert light are what I like the best. My only gripe is that the screen is not lighted.