Rating: 
Summary: Definitely a good buy!
Review: I got this phone after hearing nothing but praise about Siemens's other models. Unlike some other 2.4GHz digital phones, this one does not interfere with 802.11b wireless networking (such as Apple's AirPort). The sound quality is flawless, even when using the speakerphone, calls are clear on both ends. The features of the phone are nice, such as the keyguard, backlit display, and beeps that actually give useful information, rather than just "a button has been pressed!" The night mode is wonderful. The only disappointments I have are the lack of a headphone jack for handsfree chatting in noisy rooms, and the fact that the included NiCad batteries did not provide long talk time. I solved the latter by buying a pair of high-capacity NiMH batteries ($7/pair at Wal Mart), which the phone supports; with them, the talk time is MASSIVELY improved, easily 3 times as much.
Rating: 
Summary: 4215 Gigaset
Review: Overall performance is excellent. The intercom function between handsets is very useful as is the handset speakerphone which is very clear. One advantage to this phone over similar models from Vtech, panasonic, etc. is that you fully control and listen to messages from the answering machine from the handset. No more running downstairs to listen to messages you missed while in the bathroom, etc. ! Sound quality is very good, I don't hear any hissing, static, etc. Each handset can be individually named and the system can be set to greet callers without ringing the phone, ask them to press 1, 2, etc. for the person they want, and then only the individual handset will ring. This feature is easy to turn off/on so we turn it on when we are both home to receive calls and off when only one person is home to get all of the messages. Of course, the answering machine will always answer if needed. Caller ID works very well and it even announces the name of the caller (if you preprogram the phone).
Uses standard rechargable AA batteries which are inexpensive to replace (most phones use expensive "custom" batteries. The manual states you can use NiCad or NiMEH bAtteries.
New numbers can quickly be programed from caller ID logs and phone books can quickly be copied from one phone to another (Only have to program numbers into one handset) or each handset can have its own phone book.Overall I am very pleased.
Rating: 
Summary: Worst Phone I Have Ever Used
Review: I bought this phone expecting it would be the best phone I had ever owned. Boy, was I wrong! The first phone I purchased was defective and was returned for the same model. The second phone was also defective. To make a long story short....I had five of these phones before I returned it for good. I will never purchase another Siemens product ever again. I will admit that the features are excellent....that's why I gave the phone five chances at satisfying me. But in the end, it's a piece of junk. One of the phone's features is being able to set the ringer volume down or off at certain hours of the day. I chose to have the ringer turn completely off overnight. This worked for about the first two weeks of operation, but ceased to work for no reason after that. This was a problem for three of the phones I used. The other two phones had LCD problems within three weeks of purchase. The LCD went haywire and became unreadable. All of the phones I used made a "popping" sound whenever I moved more than twenty feet from the base unit. Overall, the sound quality wasn't very good. The phone does not have the ability to switch to an alternate channel. The phone lacked a headset jack too which is disappointing as well. The LCD readout is sluggish with each key pressed or function accessed. If you want a quality phone...don't buy this one!!
This is by far the worst cordless phone I have ever owned, and I've owned many.
Rating:
Summary: Love / Hate / Call Waits / Rebates
Review: Love:
-Cordless Speakerphone has amazing quality, most people do not know they are on speaker unless there is a medium/high level of background noise. I actually use the speakerphone 90% of the time, even if I don't need to. Some people complained about the lack of a headset jack, but you only need that if you want privacy.
-Elegant design. Small, comfortable to hold. It stands upright on a flat surface (great for speakerphone mode).
-All functionality on the phone, not the base. I Like the selection of ring tones, and the massive number of options like the intercom and room monitor. Hate:
-Answering machine playback quality is terrible. I could not understand a message that I recorded.
-This is not a 2 line phone. I knew that when I bought it, but that would ice the cake for me if it were. Anoying but OK:
-I had trouble with the call waiting feature. I called Siemens support, and they helped me fix it. I had to adjust the 'flash' setting under the 'base settings' menu. Now it works fine.
-The key delay is slightly anoying, but I have all my numbers in the directory, and voice dial (which works 75% of the time). Rebates:
-Don't forget to go to the Siemens website and download [any available] rebates .... I love this phone.
Rating: 
Summary: Take the negative reviews seriously before you buy
Review: Don't buy this phone until you understand the following. I must second a number of the negative statements made by the other reviewers- There are some serious flaws here. If you're even considering this phone then you probably care about aesthetics and ergonomics (e.g., wanting to have multiple extensions that work together), a rich feature set, as well as sound quality, which this phone DOES have in varying degrees. The major difficulty is that the positives with respect to these qualities are really great, and the negatives are shockingly bad. The feature set is so good, for a technophile like me it's hard to diss this phone too much because you just can't get voice announce and voice dialing at this price level (Closest would be the Panasonic Gigarange Elite phone that sells for 225 to 250 internet). Some of the ideas are innovative and thoughtful, like the ability to have lower volume ringing at night according to your preset times. But there is a stunning lack of field testing evident in some of the basic functions that we take for granted by now, such as the inelegance of the call waiting (MEM key, something that took me 30 minutes and three lost call waiting calls to figure out before I found that package insert), the annoying electronic music for the ON-HOLD music (sounds like an early eighties electronic watch alarm, very unprofessional and embarrassing if you're intending to maintain dignity by placing someone on hold in the first place). The sluggishness of the menu scrolling and key presses is absolutely inexcusable. Reminds me of the first caller ID units which came out in the mid nineties with very slow LCD displays. Like others have stated some very frequent options are buried deep in submenus while some low-yield options are more prominent. You really need to spend some quality time with the manual. Some of the operations could be a little more intuitive and less repetitive. I found myself (until I spent more time with it) entering names twice, once for the voice tag and once for the directory listing. Why not zero times, e.g., have the phone pull the information off the Caller I.D. with an editing option?
The Duplex speakerphone in the handset is awesome, one of the best handset speakerphones I've heard. The volume in the handset itself is on the quiet side, and the lack of headphone jack is very annoying. The range is not very good with this phone (consistent with other Siemens multiphones-That's why they sell REPEATERS for longer range use), and pales in comparison to older 900MHz analog or digital phones, not just in my experience but by other internet reviewers. (An old VTECH went down to the laundry room in the basement, and I live on the third floor. This Siemens phone gets to the entry of my apartment and chokes - No wireless network in use here either!). A Gigarange Panasonic phone I tested works down the block and then some (I had to get into my car) in the middle of San Francisco! Despite being a nice looking handset and feeling comfortable in both large and small hands, it had a somewhat inexpensive and plastic feeling compared to the water resistant Panasonic Gigarange phones. They're clearly attempting to maintain elegance by avoiding visible buttons on the base, but how elegant is it to have to turn the base upside-down to find a recessed button to page the handset each time it (frequently) gets buried in the recesses of your couch/bed/etc? I guess I care a little bit more about phones than most because of the time I spend on them. This is a highly engineered phone that has serious ergonomic and aesthetic flaws, the degree of which prevent me from happily continuing to use it or to invest any further money in proliferating this user-unfriendly technology around the house in the form of extra handsets. Siemens' next attempt at this product will be much better. Don't buy until they do more user and field testing.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Phone!
Review: This phone is fantastic! I love the voice-operated controls. The speakerphone on the handset is not only very convenient, but crystal clear. This phone is perfect for those who have the patience to read and take the time to understand the functions. It's definately worth the time, and once you get familiar with the functions, it's a very user-friendly phone. Do not get this phone if you just want to plug it in and go. The lack of an antenna concerned me, but no problems with reception, even while using by the computer. My only negative comment would be the lack of a lighted keypad. But, with all of the other unique functions, I can live without that one feature. I also would recommend to Siemens that while the speakerphone in the handset it terrific, a headset jack should also be provided for those instances when you want a private conversation. While I was doubtful that the voice commands would work well, I was in for a surprise. This is the most impressive function. Finally, this phone allows you to use 2 AA rechargeable batteries, rather than those expensive battery packs that we are all used to using. This is very convenient since you can easily (and cheaply) have an extra pair charged and ready to go. I would definately recommend this phone!
Rating: 
Summary: Complicated and Caller ID Inept
Review: Just got this phone, and I am returning it as soon as possible. There are some really cool features, and the phone is well made, but it seems like the deisgners have NEVER used caller ID. You have to press at least three buttons to get to the call log (my old Sony jumped immediately to it with the scroll wheel) and for some reason, the call log does not display the NAME of the caller, only the number. The phone does get the name of the caller when they call, but it doesn't list it in the log, which is really annoying.
The phone is also very complicated and counter intuitive. I sat down with the manual for about an hour and still don't feel like I have a good handle of all the features and settings. I have NEVER had to use a manual to set up a phone before. Perhaps the ease of use of my iPod has spoiled me...
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, Functional, With Some Big Buts...
Review: We bought this phone and 2 supplementary handsets after carefully reviewing everything on the market. We wanted: * A multi handset, centralized telephone system to make it easy to place phones in any room * The ability to centralize a very long list of foreign and domestic telephone numbers programmed in all telephones * A telephone that doesn't look like it was designed by a Jr. High shop class. This phone met these needs and more. It holds up to 200 numbers and they can be shared (with some difficulty) among the various handsets. This minimizes the effort of programming and reprogramming numbers in several telephones. It also has some unexpectedly great features such as a "hands free" setting that works surprisingly well on each handset. Overall, we are very pleased with the system. But there are several big Butts: > The User Interface is a Nightmare: It seems the engineers at Siemens did a brain storming session ("No bad ideas here!") and came up with 2000 functions no one imagined a telephone would ever do. And it seems that all of these functions, including the most obscure, made it into production. This wouldn't be such a disaster if the least-likely-to-ever-be-used functions were buried deep in the user interface. But no! The telephone treats all functions equally. The order in which various functions appear in the menus may only make sense when translated back to German and then sorted alphabetically. The user must wade through a kajillion ridiculous functions in order to find the very few that are most frequently used! Siemens could learn a great deal from Nokia! > This phone cannot be set to a "Do Not Disturb" mode except perhaps through outrageously complex programming. The phone can be turned off, but turns itself back on if it receives a call. The ringer can be turned off, but guess what? When the answering machine picks up, you are forced to hear the message being left! This is a terrible phone to keep in a bedroom in which you may not want to be disturbed, but still collect messages. > It is easy to miss the fact that you have new messages. A single, somewhat dim, blinking LED is the only indication that you might have a message. And it blinks not only for messages, but also to indicate someone phoned and didn't leave a message. Further, the LED has a very narrow aim. It takes a special effort to see if you have messages. > It is ridiculously slow in responding to various commands - even the most common and simple can take a few seconds of waiting. If you are to any degree a technophobe, or you don't like complicated interfaces, stay away from this phone! Despite all of this, I believe this to be the best phone on the market for our needs. However we may really regret not waiting for the next version of this phone. A version that hopefully has a decent user interface and enough processing power to keep up with what this phone attempts to offer.
Rating:
Summary: Don't get suckered, it's not that great!
Review: I was very excited when I found this phone, it seemed like it had everything I ever wanted in a cordless phone. Yes, it is PACKED with features but the negatives definitely outweigh the features: - NO hold or mute button. What's up with that?!? And having to hold the MEM button for a flash button I don't understand...Bad design. - The caller ID display on the handset only displays the phone number unless you go through several menu option selections to find out the name (or unless the number is in your address book). Why not put the name on the incoming call display screen like every other Caller ID system?? - NO headset capability. I didn't ever think that would be a problem but the handset is so small and awkward to handle it would be very nice to have one. - Good range, but constant buzzing noise in the background. No, I didn't have a microwave or wireless network running. - The voicemail system sounds bad. Too much crackling noise in the greeting and the messages. - Slow response to button presses. Very annoying and it's hard to understand why it's designed this way. - The display light turns off too quickly. Minor inconvenience but 'why'?? - After using it for about 6 weeks the display began to malfunction. Also, the battery began to die also. It wouldn't hold a charge for more than 3 hours on standby. Needless to say I was very disappointed. This phone HAD a lot of potential.
Rating:
Summary: Many features, but poor voice quality
Review: This Siemens Gigaset phone has many features in common with other comparable multi-handset phones by other companies including digital frequency hopping spread spectrum, one to four handsets that share the same base, speakerphone in each handset, etc. So I'll comment on some unique features, then I'll discuss the limitations. One feature that sets this phone apart is voice dialing. The 4200 series allows users to store a list of twenty phone numbers that can be dialed by voice by as many as four users. Each user records and stores the spoken name associated with each phone number. Thereafter, the user can dial a number by simply lightly pressing the up arrow on the navigator button and speaking the name of the callee. Contrary to the comments in another review, there is no need to navigate to the entry in any list using multiple keystrokes. This feature works fairly well, although I have had a misdialed number when I spoke too softly. In this case, I stopped the dialing by pressing the "End" key, and the next attempt worked when I spoke louder. If one person on this list of twenty calls you, the name is supposed to be announced by your voice. I haven't tested this feature since I don't have Call Waiting (which is required for this feature). In addition to 20-number voice dialing, there are two other quick dialing methods: [1] Any of a list of eight numbers can be dialed by holding a single digit key (2-9) until a beep sound signifies that the associated number will be dialed. [2] Any of a list of 200 numbers can be dialed by searching a directory using keystrokes. Another thoughtful feature is that the ring volume can be programmed to be quieter at night. Sadly, this phone suffers from a high level of white noise and some voice distortion in the earpiece of the handset. This problem is probably common to all phones that use some form of digital spread spectrum. My AT&T 900 MHz analog phone sounds clear and clean by comparison. Increasing the volume of this Gigaset phone increases the volume of the signal as well as the noise. Even at the loudest voice volume, I find the signal a bit weak (and I have good hearing). Also, my wife says she hears echoing when I call her using the Siemens. One other problem is that the voice quality of recorded messages in the answering machine is rather poor even at the "high" quality setting. The outgoing message is recorded with similar quality, and that may be a problem for some people. This phone looks great and has many useful features. Unfortunately, the poor voice quality lowers the overall score to three stars. Other DSS phones probably suffer from constant background hiss, and I would rate them no higher. A 900 MHz analog phone has much better sound, but its drawback is that your neighbors with cheap scanners can hear your conversations. If you need privacy in a cordless phone, this is a good choice since it has many features. The sound quality not great, but probably no DSS phone does much better at this time.
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