Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic KX-TCD 507ES DECT Cordless Phone With Additional Handset & Charger - Metallic Silver

After a few days of scouting the Internet for a new Cordless I narrowed it down to the Panasonic. The main problem with the set I had was the lack of backlight. So, sat there in the dark, watching a film, I couldn't see who was calling without flicking the light-switch. The Panasonic is fully backlit (in a nice blue), it has SMS for text junkies (only useful as a backup really, costly and finicky), it's range seems pretty good (my wife takes it across to her friends 200m away and it works fine). The ring tones are quite nice, the usual set of rings and tunes, all polyphonic. The interface is a little confusing at first but once you have a bit of time to play with it it becomes second nature. The phonebook holds a stack of numbers (a nice touch is the ability to 'send' the phonebook entries to the other handset). There is also a 'Walkie-Talkie' function that allows you to use the handsets independently of the Base Unit, all good.

A fine product, superior to most of it's competition, go consume!

We spent a long time selecting this pair of phones. Right now, the KX-TCD 507ES is the best featured choice in its price category. Doubtless this will change in a few months.

Our key features were:
Good, clear voice communication
Long range (you can walk down the road, post a letter, and stay in range)
Long battery life, both for standby and talk
Intercom feature -- one handset talks to the other
Headset feature
Caller ID
Ability to send and receive SMS messages

There are quite a few phones in this zone that offer most of these features, but the Panasonic is the only one that offered all of them.

The most difficult to track down was the headset feature -- in my book an essential for those long teleconferences. Three years ago many phones offered this, but now more and more manufacturers are omitting it.

Of course, no amount of features can compensate for poor audio quality. These are definitely good phones, approaching -- though not equalling -- the quality of fixed-line phones. They are the best we have owned. Until the Panasonics, we always kept a fixed-line phone ready for interviews with radio-stations. But we've never had any complaints about the quality from these phones. They don't, of course, compare with radio's preferred choice, ISDN, but that is another ball game entirely.

We are very pleased with these, and we would happily consider other Panasonic equipment on the basis of them.

Strongly recommended

My old phone was annoying in that the battery always ran out when you needed it - so a phone that used standard AAA rechargables was a real bonus. The included ones are Ni-mh 750mah which is a pretty reasonable; no memory effect and 900mah are available if you want to upgrade.

In use the phones are clear and have a good range, the controls are easy and about the closest to a mobile that I have used so far on a cordless phone. I programmed my numbers into one of the handsets and was able to transfer the phonebook to the other which I thought was quite neat. Basic things like adjusting the volume, transfering calls between phones and paging is really easy too. I have not used the SMS service or the walkie-talkie feature.

The backlight is great when in a dark place and there is a reasonable selection of ringtones.

The only reasons I didn't give the package five stars are that the battery indicator goes down to one bar quite quickly, even though there is still lots of battery time left and the back of the phone is curved so they don't lie down so easily, they are better standing (a personal point I guess).

I bought this on the basis of other reviews and the name. But, the sound quality is poor. It breaks up like a bad mobile phone, and there is a constant hiss or buss in the background. My previous (3 yr old) Phillips Ka phone was WAY better than this. Shame, as the buttons, display and overall feel of the phone is excellent.