Home > Consumer Reviews > SONY SPPA2780 2.4 GHz Multi-Handset Cordless Phone with Digital Answering Machine

I have owned this phone since August 2001 and it has worked on both standard (Verizon) and VoIP (Vonage) networks without any problems at all. In general I like Sony equipment and this phone has not disappointed. Talk-time is, with a fresh battery, around 2 hours and stand-by time around 24 hours, give or take.

I particularly like the speakerphone (base unit only) and the answering machine (base unit only but accessible via handsets), both are easy to use. The 2.4 GHz handset has never let me down, quality always good. To be fair, we live in a 1 br. apartment so dropout has never been an issue. Even so, neither 802.11 nor microwave ovens have posed a hassle to the quality of calls made via the handset.

All in all, I think this is a great phone, it's lasted me three years now and it's still going strong. It gets a LOT of use, I can't think of too many electronics products nowadays that last more than 12 months, in this regard the Sony phone is a standout.

Also, to the other reviewer who was looking for a replacement battery (my original battery died after about 18 months) for the handset, I got one from Radio Shack for about $12.95 in about a week, not a problem. Even better, it is a 1000 mAh battery as opposed to the feeble 700 mAh one that came with the phone, so talk-time is longer.

I have this Sony telephone and two expandable handsets. We live in an old house with limited phone jacks, so we have the expandable handsets in places where we could not otherwise have a telephone. We also can take the handset with us when we go to another phoneless room and save running up and down steps to answer a phone. The only problem we have is occasionally forgetting to put one of the cordless handsets in a charger at night and then running down the batteries. My biggest worry is where to buy new batteries as this phone seems to be discontinued.

I purchased this phone system in 2001. I really liked all the features and how nicely the whole package was put together. Sony really knows how to design consumer products.

BUT DON'T BUY THIS PHONE! 6 months after I purchased it the cordless handsets starting having problems with the keypads. I purchased the system and 2 additional phones. That's a total of 4 cordless phones. Every single phone, without exception developed problems with the keypad. At first the numbers are hard to press, then over time certain numbers on the keypad stop working all together. If this only happened to one of the cordless phones I would have written it off to a bad one in the bunch. But EVERY cordless phone developed the problem.

Don't even get me started on the Sony's support crappy support. I gave up and purchased aonther phone system.

Up until I purchased this phone system I had been extremely happy with my Sony purchases. This has definately soured me. I'll think twice about buying any Sony product. Last thing I want is to have to deal with some guy in India who doesn't understand me next time I have a problem.

The Sony DSS Cordless Phone System was the best available until Silicon Valley rolled out Wi-Fi. It featured incredible security. It broadcasted beyond scannable frequencies and only then with digital encryption spread over 30,000 channels. The inherent power loss that comes with secured cordless telephones was fixed by installing an extremely powerful transceiver. The resulting range was close to half a mile in my installation. No other cordless has ever (or maybe should) have gotten anywhere near that powerful. This odd feature led Sony to integrate a walkie-talkie feature whereby the handsets could communicate anywhere. True, they ate up batteries in the process but their signal was unstoppable.

That was, at least, until it was stopped dead in its tracks by Wi-Fi. The 2.4 GHz band was relatively unused when the phone was introduced but the introduction of wireless router ended that reality. But the Sony still won out. Turning that handset on would shut down Wi-Fi networks for about a half-mile. The hundreds of frequency jumps a second (all purposely random) prevented any trunking or reserved frequency feature on the routers. Those on the old 802.11a and the new 802.11g Wi-Fi standards are immune because they work on (respectively) higher and lower frequency ranges.

Yet 802.11b remains the common Wi-Fi standard and thus this phone is now obsolete. Even though it has the muscle, it lost out to another wireless device. The funny thing is that this is being repeated with 802.11g operating on the same frequency range as next-generation 5.8 GHz cordless phones. Only this time those underpowered phones are the ones getting the static.