Home > Consumer Reviews > AT&T E5965C 5.8 GHz DSS Expandable Cordless Phone with Answering System

This is a great phone - solidly built and easy to use. The other 4 and 5 star reviews here are right on target. We bought this phone because we wanted something that worked to replace our 20 year old panasonic answering machine, without needing to many extra features. Our basic needs are that the phone works well from anywhere in the house or yard and that the answering machine isn't complicated (it has one voice mailbox) - we got all of that.

The problem is with the display reliability which has cut out for us on the base phone and 2 extra handsets. We had no problem working with Amazon to have them replaced - and for now are loving our new phones.

Adding extra handsets is very easy - and if necessary you can use an extra handset phone to replace your base handset. You do not need the color display which only adds cosmetics and as we found is not any more reliable.

Recommend this phone to anyone who is replacing their home or small office phone system - but order through Amazon or someone that will work with you should a replacement be needed.

I read all the previous reviews. It seems that the biggest negative for this telephone was that there was no central phone directory and that you couldn't clear the calls on the handsets from the base. I find these missing features a plus! I have the base unit with 4 handsets. We each store our own personal phone numbers on individual handsets and we can clear the call list when we want. The speaker phone feature on the handsets comes in nice when you have been put on indefinite hold and using the remote access from the handset to get messages from the answering machine is a nice feature. We like the verbal announcement of the number from the base unit so we can choose to pick up or let it go to the answering machine. Sound quality is excellent! Everything works as expected. In comparison to the Panasonics I have been frustrated with for the past few years these are top of the line! Historically I have never owned a bad telephone from AT&T. Oh, transfering calls from one handset to another is really great too!

This is a great machine. I've never had a phone with the range of this one and it's crystal clear with tons of features. I'm an electrical engineer so I knew the hardware inside the phone was top of the line. I loved it so much that I bought another one as a present for Christmas this year.

I bought this phone based on the Consumer Reports review and the largely positive on-line reviews here. I also bought three additional handsets. This phone system is awful. The range is terrible; anything over 20 feet gets static and occasional dropped calls. The battery life is awful, you can only get about 1 day of battery life and that's if you're not using it, so basically you have to keep it on the charger. I only bought this a few months ago, and already one of the handsets has died completely. Minor problems are: a horrible menu system; caller ID doesn't show the name only the number; if you try to redial a number that just called you it dials the area code first with no "1" in front of it so if you use it, you'll be calling a wrong number. Even though I have sunk several hundred dollars into the base and three additional handsets, I will probably junk the entire system because it's just not worth the hassle.

Consumer Reports gave this phone/answering machine combo a recommendation, so I was prepared to be impressed. Unfortunately that didn't happen and I decided to return it. Here are the reasons I took it back:
-No ability to copy the phonebook from handset to handset. What's with that? They can communicate with each other, right? This seemed like a real disconnect to me.
-No ability to rename handsets. If I've got 6 handsets in the house, am I going to remember that handset5 is the kitchen and handset3 is the playroom? The ability to name handsets ('kitchen', 'office', 'shop') doesn't seem too much to ask. My 5 year old Siemens phone did that. When transferring a call, am I going to have to refer to a list of handsets and their locations that I taped to the back of the phone?
-Phonebook dialing requires the extra step of choosing which format to dial with. Some would consider this an extra feature. For me, I set the phonebook entry to dial the way my phone carrier requires it to be dialed and forget about it. How often do the dialing rules change in your areacode?
Those were the deal-breakers for me. The system seemed well put together, clarity was good, answering machine worked fine, but the integration between base and handset wasn't what it should have been.