Rating: 
Summary: Great Phone, Especially for Home PC Wireless Users
Review: I'm very pleased with this phone, in fact I just ordered two additional handsets. I work at home a lot, and I needed a high quality speakerphone (with a mute button for teleconferences!!) that wouldn't interfere with my home (802.11b) wireless setup ... this phone fits the bill as it uses the 5.8 GHz band for *both* sending and receiving (unlike other "5.8" phones on the market).Rather than repeating details already covered in the reviews below, I'll address a couple of topics from the reviews ithat caused me to think twice about purchasing the phone when I first read them. The handset volume issue: I currently own an older Panasonic cordless phone which really had low volume, almost unusable with ambient noise, so the reviews stating this was still a problem really concerned me. However now that I've got the phone, I don't see what the problem is. It's plenty loud on the medium setting, and the handset speakerphone is even louder. The base unit speakerphone and microphone are of such good quality, that I suspect I'll rarely be using the handset if I'm near the base unit. So my advice is: if you have a hearing disability, sure preview the phone before purchasing, but otherwise don't worry about it. The calling card problem: In the review on Amazon of the standalone handset, someone pointed out that the largest phone number that's supported is 32 digits. This means you can't program most calling card sequences because they typically are 1 + 30 digits + 4 digit PIN. This, alas, is true. But the phone is so good otherwise I'm not too upset about this. Handset/base unit usability: Panasonic has made a decent, but incomplete, effort to make the same buttons do the same things on the hand set and base unit. There are some things done slightly differently on each, when as far as I could tell they could have been made to work the same way, but the oveall usability of this phone is so good one can overlook this. That's about all I think is worth writing about - this is one darn good phone, easily the best I've owned. P.S. to Canadian readers: Amazon's price is very, very good, in fact it's approximately 50% of the Canadian street price (Panasonic Canada seems to have very high mark-ups, you can check out the list prices at panasonic.ca)so it's worth it to find a friend in the US who Amazon can ship this phone to on your behalf.
Rating:
Summary: Completely Satisfied
Review: I've been reading reviews of various cordless phone/answering machine combinations here for several months. I've been very unhappy with my old Sony 900 MHz unit for various reasons, yet each new machine that I contemplated buying had quite a few reviewers who found it unsatisfactory. In looking for a new machine I needed a true 5.8 GHz phone that wouldn't interfere with my wi-fi network. Some of the 5.8 phones on the market are deceptive in this regard, using the 2.4 GHz frequency one-way. My other main concern was the audio quality of the answering machine. The Sony I've replaced failed to pick up the voices of callers who spoke a little softly. The first thing I did when I set this phone up was to call and weakly mumble a message. It passed the test. Frankly, I think the audio is not as good as the old machines that used cassette tapes, but I'm not likely to find one of those for sale outside Ebay. The Panasonic 5100 has a nice array of features that should meet the needs of most customers and it's attractively designed. I will soon be ordering a couple of extra handsets for it. The manual is designed well enough to make the phone's advanced features accessible to any user who will take a little time to study it.
Rating: 
Summary: Problems Setting Up KX-TG5100M
Review: If you experience low volume with the handset, it may pay to call Panasonic Tech Support because if you switch the line mode from "B" to "A" and do a complete recharge of the handset battery, you can improve the volume. I thought there was a defect with my first unit and I returned it for another unit which still had low volume on the handset despite all attempts to increase it. But after switching the line mode and doing a second complete handset battery recharge the volume has improved but still a little faint. It also seems very faint when operating my wireless and cable PC's and TV in my home office, despite operating at 5.8GHZ.
Rating: 
Summary: Buyer beware
Review: If you purchase this product, I hope you are completely satisfied. It is my opinion that the reliability of Panasonic products has slipped in recent years, and this was confirmed to me when a product I purchased quickly failed. The reason I'm posting this is to warn you that the warranty that accompanies Panasonic products only has value if the company chooses to stand behind it. In my case, they weaseled out of it, leaving me with a total loss and no further recourse. Good luck with your decision.
Rating:
Summary: Would like to have it!
Review: It would be nice to have a dependable shipper that would ship my product to the proper city.There is a big difference in Houston and Austin.
Rating:
Summary: Specifically, Handset Volume
Review: My father recently bought this phone for home use. He has hearing aides, but can usually do pretty well hearing on phones in spite of this. When using the handsets, he of course turned the volume all the way up. He could hear the caller, but they were faint and he couldn't understand what they were saying. So I came amazon.com to look to see if others were having similar issues and try to find advise. (Also, tried Panasonic customer support. Unfortunately, got no assistance there.) I appreciated all of the reviews written here. Many reviews are especially thorough and some even mentioned it would be helpful if the handsets could be turned even louder in volume. It was good to know that at least my father wasn't alone. (Keeping in mind he already does have hearing aides.) :) An odd, but interesting, thing my father did to address the inability of the handset volume to be turned up any more than it can be: He turns on the speakerphone on the handset, though still holds it in his hand. He OFTEN also turns the phone (with speakerphone on) around in his hand so the speaker (on the back of the handset) is directly by his ear. He can hear/understand the caller PERFECTLY, and the handset mic is good and picks up his voice well for the caller to hear him too. NOW - He is COMPLETELY satisfied with the phone. It may look odd, but it works for him. For me, that's what matters most. I realize this won't work for everyone - you may not want all your caller's words to be blasted out through the speaker phone. But, I wanted to share it in hopes it may help someone else in a similar situation.
Rating:
Summary: Second phone died too! Horrible product, do NOT recommend.
Review: My wife purchased this product from eBay last December, when it arrived I set it up according to the instructions, let it charge for the requisite 6 hours and about an hour after I used it for the first time, the handset screen died. About an hour later the auxiliary screen died as well and finally the screen died on the base about 15 minutes later. I called Panasonic for assistance and was disconnected twice from the 800# before I finally managed to stay connected and spoke to a tech, who insisted that it must have been a power surge and the unit was going to have to be replaced.
The unit was still under warranty, even though we were not the original purchasers. We got all the information required and sent it along with the unit to the 'regional' repair place that was designated and waited. And waited for over a month. I finally placed a call to the repair place and was informed that they had been unable to fix it and had shipped it to the main Panasonic repair depot in Texas, who, when I called there insisted they had not received it. I called the first place back to tell them that, they were adamant that they had sent it, and gave me a tracking number to give to the depot. I suggested that they might want to handle this internally, since I was starting to have to call toll numbers in order to contact these places, and it was starting to wear on my nerves.
My wife suggested that we send a letter to the President of Panasonic, hoping that if we lit a fire under them there, our phone would be found. No such luck. 6 months went by, there was one more phone call from the people at the regional repair center, asking if we had gotten the phone back, when I informed them that we hadn't, the woman on the other end said that she would "do something" and hung up. Another 2 months went by when I received in the mail a letter from the President's assistant asking if I had either received the phone as was satisfactorily pleased, or if I had any more information about the phone to give them, so they could close the matter interally. I called the woman at the number she gave me and told her in no certain terms that I was EXTREMELY disappointed with my experience with her company and that I hadn't either received the phone or any word about what had happened to it. The next day there was a package on the doorstep. It was a replacement phone...same model. I called the woman back and asked for an explanation. She said that the outfit in Texas had only just "found" the phone on the other side of the warehouse (in another plane of existence no doubt) and had shipped me a refurbished model.
This afternoon the phone stopped working in spectacular fashion. The base is flashing like a christmas tree and there's a message on the screen that says "System Error #9", of which I can find no reference in the owner's manual and when I called the customer service line, I was disconnected TWICE so far.
I am livid, this is ridiculous. If I could give a NO stars rating, I would, since a negative rating is also unavailable.
At this point I'm going to email the woman that had contacted me the last time, I made sure to get her email address so that I didn't have to call her on my dime for satisfaction. IF you're considering buying Panasonic, think twice. You were warned.
Rating:
Summary: I LOVE this phone
Review: Overall, this is a pretty good phone, and does everything I want it to. It has decent sound and range...but that's what I expected. It has a couple of quirks that prevent it from getting a 5-star rating. First of all, if the answering machine has picked up, it does not know that another extension (in my case, a corded phone) has picked up, and doesn't shut off. Real annoying, especially since it picks up on 3.5 rings (or 1.5 if there are messages). A real pain since these phones are at opposite ends of the house. If I had known this before buying the phone, I would have opted for a seperate phone and answering machine. Secondly, it always adds a "1" and the area code to caller id numbers, even when it is a local call. As an added "bonus" if you just hit "redial" on one of these calls, it will go thru, and you will be charged for a "local toll call". Third, deleting the "missed calls" list on the base doesn't erase them from the handsets, and vice versa. Deleting the "missed calls" from the handset is not intuitive.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent phone system, just a couple gripes
Review: Overall, this is an outstanding telephone system. I purchased the base unit kx-tg5100M and one additional handset kx-tga510M back in June to replace a Sony 900MHz cordless that had chronic battery life problems. Unfortunately I just had to write Panasonic customer service as within the last couple of weeks one of the handsets has started to exhibit an LCD that is barely readable (sometimes fair, sometimes not at all). The unit is fully charged and I have adjusted contrast, with only marginal effect. The other handset is still performing normally. The units are covered by a 1-year warranty so I'm not expecting any issues with customer service. Aside from this as I mentioned, the phone is great! My highlights... Pros:
-Great sound quality throughout the house and around our suburban 1/3 acre lot
-No interference with wireless network or other household Cons:
-LCD issue as mentioned above
-Lack of Caller ID to programmed number matching on incomming calls
-My base unit speakerphone performance does not appear to measure up to that of other reviewers, I would rate the speakerphone as average to slightly below average, would be great if Panasonic would offer a configuration with a corded handset in the base as well
-Ability to copy phone numbers from base-handset, handset-base or handset-handset is great except that in my experience it is a copy only with no over-write capability. This is an issue in the case where I maintain the phonebook at the base unit and want to publish out to the handsets. If you delete a number from the base and then copy to a handset, the deleted number still exists on the handset. Short of pulling the battery and starting over (re-register, etc...) with the handset, I can't find a way of erasing all of the phonebook entries in a handset. My (mostly minor) gripes aside, this is still a great telephone system. I feel that it still merits 4-stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Volume could be louder
Review: The highest volume level isn't very loud. I also wish it were a lot easier to press the keys on the base. This phone seems to have a lot of features but these 1st 2 issues are making me think I might return this phone and try again.
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