Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic Expandable Digital Cordless Dect 6.0 Phone System (KXTG8232B)

Overall, this phone set is terrific. It features a bright color screen and a sleek glossy black look. (Once you go with a color screen, it's hard to go back) The base station is surprisingly compact. Call clarity is excellent. Speakerphone is plenty loud. You can even check your answering machine through the handset! Panasonic's usual mess of small buttons has been streamlined somewhat to reduce confusion.
A slight gripe is that while Panasonic gives you a color screen, it doesn't really use it to its full potential. You have a choice of *three*, count 'em, three wallpapers. And that's it! All but one are pretty tacky.
A bigger gripe revolves around the answering machine. First of all, Panasonic removed the talking Caller ID that was standard on almost all their previous models. Secondly, there is no on-phone notification that someone left a message on your machine. The *only* indication is a hard-to-see blinking red light on the base station. There is no audio notification that there are new message either (many other phones beep when there's a new message). So unless you are frequently near the base station (which I'm not), you may have messages and not know it.
So in a nutshell:
PROS
Great sound
No WiFi/Bluetooth Interference with DECT6
Compact, sleek styling
Backlit keypad
Good speakerphone
Answering machine operation from handset.

CONS
No audible or visual new message alert on handset
Limited customizability (few wallpapers/ringtones)
No talking caller ID.

My quest for the ideal house phone is on hold for a while, if I change phones again in the near future my wife is going to hit me with something. Nevertheless, I am fairly happy with this phone, which performs well with an excellent battery life ( something that kiled the Philips DECT phone I had bought previously) and good sound quality but has some shortcomings.

A premise: I can only speak for the phone, we do not use the answering machine because we prefer the service provided by our VOIP service, Broadvoice, which allows for email notifications my wife likes.

Pros

Sound quality is very good.
Screen is well sized, allows for easy reading of the caller ID which is a plus for my over 40 eyes, do not need to grab reading glasses which I hate enough already.
Phone size is right, keys are precise and responsive, if a bit small.
As I mentioned, the battery life is very good, and the phone indicates "charge complete" when on the cradle which is useful. With other phones we had, we were always rushing to put them back in the cradle after calls, this one you can leave hanging around for days.

Cons

Volume, volume, volume. Way too low; when I work from home people ask me to raise my voice more than with the Philips phones. It gets tiring when you are working from home.

It has a dedicated Mute button (instead of a soft key appearing only during conversations), which was intelligently placed by their engineers immmediately below the Off button. I have dropped off inadvertenly from conference calls more than once because of this.

It lacks a visual indicator on the unit to notify of VM. Other units have a light blinking on every unit, this model displays a message on the screen which means you have to remember to look at it when you come home.

So, while I can definitively live with this phone long enough to wait for new models to appear, it's not going to be a life long affair.

Target has a great deal for this phone this week (only $78!!) and this store has good return policy (90 days without any re-stocking fee). Hence, I decide to give it a try. I feel completely satisfied and happy with this product after a few days. The phone is stylish, clear, loud, and good battery life. The speaker phone is very clear and loud, which is very important to me so that I can type on my computer at same time. In addition, it comes with lots of extra features such as colorful wall paper (only 3 to choose from), background color customization (blue, yellow, pink, green), caller ID, one-touch dial, phone book with 50 entries, date/time display, alarm clock, lots of ring tones selections ....etc. You can even "copy all" the phone book from one phone to another phone which saves me lots of time from entering the phone book again. There is a cool feature that you can assign different phone numbers to different groups (i.e. family, friend). Each group can be customized with different ring tones and background color! Also, you can listen your record messages from any phone. I don't have anything to complain about this product except I wish the phone can be packed with more cell-phone-like features such as camera and USB/blue tooth so that I can transfer my own ring tone and background pictures from my computer to the phone.

When the batteries on my years old 2.4 GHz Panasonic phones all died, again, I decided to get new phones rather than just new batteries. The extended talk time per charge, color display and backlit keys sent me out in search of this phone despite the few user reviews. I have had the phone for about a week and there are many things that I love about it. It's easy to use, small and light, bright and cheerie, and CUTE! Unfortunately, there are three problems that are deal breakers for me.

1. The sound quality in no way matches my previous Panasonics. People on the other end sound gravelly and somewhat muffled, so much so that I often have to ask them to repeat something they've said. I have tried moving the base all over the house to improve the sound, but it hasn't helped.

2. The sound totally cuts out briefly from time to time.

3. You can't put a call on hold with this phone. You can mute a call and you can transfer a call from one handset to another but you can't put it on hold. Our home is on three levels and there is a studio at the far end of our back yard. If I want to change locations, and therefore handsets during a call, I need more than the 1 minute the transfer call feature allows for getting to the new location.

Except for these 3 things, I love this phone (did I mention I'm a gadget junkie). In order to get myself to return it, I have to keep reminding myself that a phone, regardless of its cuteness factor, is of no use if you can't understand the people you are talking to. Panasonic suggested I try a 5.8 GHz phone for best sound. I hope they're right.

I needed a phone with a headset jack, a system voicemail indicator, and caller ID. Initially I bought an AT&T, but I should have paid attention to the bad reviews of the AT&T phones because I soon discovered it was absolute junk. I bought this phone to replace it and the AT&T phone when straight into the trash.

I can't say anything bad about the Panasonic KX-TG8232. It does everything I wanted and more. If I try hard to find something negative to say, the only thing I can come up with is how the shiny black surface picks up fingerprints a little more than I would like, but that's it. I'll live with the fingerprints to have a phone this nice.