Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic KX-FP155 Fax Machine

We were very disappointed with this fax machine for two reasons. First, it uses these annoying cartridge ribbons, and it uses a LOT of them. They are very expensive and don't last long at all. The low price of the machine doesn't make up for the high price of the ribbons. Second, the thing broke after only 2 1/2 months of use. The ribbon got itself so jammed up a piece actually broke off inside, making it so we can no longer send a fax. I would only recommend this in a very low use situation.

This machine will only print faxes when I hold the front panel in the correct position. The latch that would normally do this has never worked and duct tape would cover the controls. Don't waste your money.

I wanted to get an inexpensive all-in-one fax/copy/answering machine as a Christmas gift for my parents. It needed to be easy to use, it needed to use plain paper, and the replacement ink needed to be a reasonable price. This machine provided each of these for my parents. They are not very technically proficient, yet my father had it setup in about 15 minutes. They only receive or send about 1 fax a week, so it's an answering machine first, and a fax second. It's been a few months now, and I have not heard any complaints from them. I call that a success!

It made me angry to see that several other reviewers have had the latching mechanism on the FP-155 break. I owned my machine for only several months when I discovered the lid ajar one day, and the lid wouldn't latch. Until I read in these reviews that others have had this problem, I assumed I had somehow broken the latch myself.

Panasonic obviously has a heinous design flaw on this machine. My machine was never dropped or abused, and I'm certainly not a 'frequent faxer.' As stated by other reviewers, this broken latch makes it impossible to transmit or receive faxes unless you jury-rig the lid shut (a real pain!), or worse, sit there and hold the blasted thing shut with both hands while faxing.

This latching mechanism failure renders the FP-155 essentially useless. It's really soured me on Panasonic products.

After fussing with the film cartridge for about 15 minutes in the store, I decided that the floor model suffered some abuse and that this would not be a problem for my home/office. I bought the machine, set it up, and began testing it. Very easy to set up and made good quality copies. I recorded my voice message for the answering machine and sounded like I was in a sewer (echo, mumbly sound). This is not the quality machine I want when people call my business. I returned it and am shopping for a better quality answering machine, even if it means having a separate stand-alone fax machine.