Rating: 
Summary: This is the BMW of cordless phones
Review: This is a well engineered and designed telephone. I got my phone last night and just managed to go through most of the manual. I am truly impressed by the quality of the construction and the features of this phone system. This is truly an advanced telephone system that is extremely well implemented. I am not sure what all the negative reviews are about and I am glad that I gave this phone (my first Siemens) a try. If you are in the market for a cordless try this phone you won't be disappointed. This is a great phone for the majority of the people. It is true that it does not have a headset jack and does not have a mute button. But honesty I never use mute or headsets on my phones anyway. Here are the pluses as I see them: 1. Great sound quality - on the phone, answering machine and the speaker phone -- it blows away Panasonic KX-TG2583.
2. Expandable system (multi handset that use the same base unit)
4. Programmable digital options (much like a cell phones)
3. Loads of options (e.g. handset to handset intercom, speaker phone on the handset and ...)
5. Total access to the answering machine on the handset with digital prompts and displays on the handset
6. Truly amazing European design (BMW of the cordless phones)
7. Voice command (dials up to 20 different numbers on voice command)
8. German made
Rating: 
Summary: Great on paper, not so good in person
Review: PROS: Cool features, cool design, good battery life
CONS: Poor sound quality, wierd ring tones After searching for several months for a replacement for our old Panasonic 900Mhz cordless, I happened across the Siemens 4000 series. Looking at the spec sheets, these phones seemed to have everything that I wanted - expandability, greater range than my current phone, caller ID on the handset, and a built-in answering machine. They also have lots of extra features that sounded really cool. One of my friends has an older model and highly recommended it to me, so I decided to give it a try. I chose the Comfort series, and ordered the base station and one additional handset from Amazon. I received the phones quite quickly and set them up immediately. After charging the batteries, I took the phone for a test run. I didn't find the phone to be overly complex, as long as you refer to the manual during setup. One thing that immediately struck me as odd was how when I set the greeting for the answering machine, the voice prompts were extremely crisp and clear, but the greeting I recorded sounded fuzzy. I placed several calls from both handsets, and they both sounded the same - voices were fuzzy and the sound quality was horrible. It sounded like you were always at the edge of the range for the phone, even though you could be in the same room as the base station and still hear the static. I tried moving the base station, to no avail. It seemed that computer generated voices by the phone were clear, but any recorded or transmitted voices were fuzzy. The other thing that drove us crazy about the phones were their ring tones. While I appreciated the variety of choices, it would have been nice to have one normal ringtone. None of the available rings sound like a real phone - instead they all sound like a pager or cell phone with trendy rings. THE VERDICT: I really wanted to like these phones, because they are definitely cool. While I could get over the ringtones, I just couldn't live with the poor sound quality from a phone that costs as much as this one does. For me, the most important feature in a cordless phone is how it sounds, and this phone just does not sound as clear as it should. After a two week trial, I returned the phones to Amazon (great return service from Amazon, BTW). I think I'm going to look into the Panasonic phone systems that are similar to this one, so maybe I'll be able to compare them soon.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: Sounds great on paper and online, but.....
I admit that this is one of the better esthetically designed cordless phones out there in the US. I do not know why other manufacturers such as sony, panasonic cannot mack the phones as beautiful as the ones sold in Europe or Asia. And this model works fine too: full duplex speakerphones and access to answering machine from each handset. In addition, adding handset does not require additional physical phone jacks.... However, the phone is lacking one very important feature: mute! It is very frustrating the fact that you can put the phone on speaker, but there is no mute function. You cannot have background conversation without the other side hearing you. Plus, the call waiting function never works on me. While I am on the line, I tried to activate the call waiting by going through the menu. Everytime I tried it, it crashes on me...very annoying. So, if you use it for just regular home phone with cordless being important, then this phone is for you. However, if you need to use it for business, especially those in conference call, forget it.
Rating:
Summary: This phone is getting a bad rap
Review: I bought this phone from Amazon before I read the many negative reviews posted herein. So it was with some trepidation that I received it and started getting the phone operational. I can say with experience now that the phone is not that difficult to operate or to program. It has all the features you'd ever want and then some. You do need to read the manual carefully to utilize all the functions. If you can't do that well, go for a simpler phone. I am very happy with it. The only negative is the slow response in punching in numbers when dialing or responding to phone menus (like when you call your bank for a quick balance). The time it takes from when you push the digit to when you hear the responding tone is too slow and (in my opinion) needless.
Rating: 
Summary: Be FOREWARNED...
Review: The Siemens Gigaset 4200, 4210, and 4215 units are powerful telephones, but be FOREWARNED.... Customers residing in the 14-state Qwest (formerly US West) service area may NOT be able to utilize some of the advanced telephone features. Siemens claims that the 4200-series provides support for "Advanced Caller ID on Call Waiting" (aka "Caller ID 2.5") when the service is obtained from the local telephone company. The Siemens 4215 User's Manual states, "The Gigaset 4215 fully supports this convenient telephone company feature." Don't believe it!!!! Siemens provides support for "Caller ID 2.5" and claims it is a "standard". Qwest provides "Call Waiting Deluxe" which requires Type 3 (aka ADSI or Analog Display Service Interface) CPE (Customer Premises Equipment). Type 3 CPE can be programmed (by calling a Qwest-provided 800 number) for use in the Qwest service area with the "Call Waiting Deluxe" service. Siemens' Gigaset 4200-series CANNOT be programmed to work with the Qwest "Call Waiting Deluxe" service. How Siemens can sell a brand new telephone boldly claiming support for features that require support from, but are not provided by, one of the major national telephone companies (serving 14 states and millions of consumers) is absolutely beyond me! Siemens customer support is rather unknowledgeable regarding these matters. They're good at making excuses and claiming that "2.5 is the current standard", but absolutely of no assistance in making this customer happy. I won't be buying any more of these telephones and can't recommend them to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Average phone with significant shortcomings for some users.
Review: I really wanted to like this phone and I did find it somewhat intriguing. But bottom line is that this phone comes up short on key features, especially considering its price. I would expect a phone that let's you add up to 3 additional headsets to have a corresponding number of answering machine mailboxes. It does not. There is only one single mailbox on this phone. Very disappointing. A phone that bills itself as a home/office phone should have a headset jack. This phone does not. Give me a break...how hard is it to include a headset jack? This makes it virtually useless for me as I'm on the phone for hours a day and using the speakerphone is insulting to clients and holding a phone to the ear for long periods of time is not comfortable. The menu system of the phone is quite complex to navigate. It's fairly intuitive once you breeze through the manual, but it is certainly not something that my mother or grandmother would ever be able to deal with. The voice dialing feature is pretty useful but problematic in that it took me 20-30 attempts to get some names into the phone successfully. I do not know why this was such a problem, but it was. There is a wide variety of ringer styles which is a nice touch, although certainly not something I would have based my buying decision on. In a very questionable design decision, the page button on the base station is located in an extremely inconvenient place, underneath the unit. That's correct, if you want to page the handset to find out where it is, you have to pick up the base station and push a combination reset/page button. Ludicrous! The quality of the recording is about middle of the road. Not really bad, but not really good either. The sound quality of the headset is a bit less than average I'd say. Although I did not hear any hiss or white noise, the sound was thin and I found the headset a little uncomfortable on the ear. It tended to slip around my ear and I never feel like it's quite on my ear correctly. Even with the $30 rebate, I think this phone is overpriced for the features that it has. It's certainly an attractive phone and if your needs are modest it might be a good choice for you. But for my needs, it just doesn't measure up. I rated it 3 not because of it's shortcomings, but based on it's performance. If I had rated the phone on its performance and shortcomings combined, I would have given it a 2 rating.
Rating: 
Summary: The Rain Man of cordless phones...
Review: ...as in Dustin Hoffman's famous portrayal of an idiot savant. As others have pointed out, this phone is a puzzling mixture of the stupid and the brilliant. The reviews here are very helpful and largely accurate, but I was almost put off sufficiently by some to stop me from buying the phone. I would encourage you to at least give it a try and then return it if the negatives outweigh the positives. My family is extremely happy overall. The major +'s & -'s have been well covered in other reviews, so let me just a list few things that do not appear to have been stressed: NEGATIVES:
-1) The sound quality of the handset is merely OK (though in my house it does *not* suffer from significant background white noise, as others seemed to have complained). It just sounds a bit thin and tinny. [But see +1 below.]
-2) The default sound quality of the answering machine is *poor*, but if you set the user-configurable quality setting to high (which cuts recording time down from 30 minutes to 15) it becomes adequate.
-3) Sharing saved phone numbers with extension handsets is not difficult, but there is no setting for automatically doing this. Every time you add entries on one phone you must remember to manually send these entries to the extension phones, one phone at a time.
-4) It's been said by others, but the lack of a true MUTE function is bizarre.
-5) Never put someone on HOLD without trying it out on yourself first---the electronic Muzak that the phone inflicts on the caller is embarrassing! POSITIVES:
+1) The speakerphone in the handset is nice and loud and, more importantly, to my ears is noticeably *clearer* than listening with the phone pressed to one's ear. I therefore use the speakerphone whenever possible.
+2) The sound quality is not symmetrical: if you call John, you may only hear what he says with adequate clarity, but John will hear what you say with crystal clarity.
+3) I thought the voice-activated dialing would simply be a gimmick that I would never even use. But in fact it works so flawlessly that now I dial *every* regular number with my voice!
+4) It feels solid and well made in the hand, and it looks elegant and high-tech, but not in that faddish way that can often end up looking silly in just a year or two.
+5) Contrary to what some people seem to have claimed, I do *not* notice an interference with my 802.11b (=WiFi) home computer network.
+6) The intercom feature works very well, and is a crucial plus in a big house where people usually have to yell down two flights of stairs in the hopes of being heard.
+7) Some have complained of useful features being buried too deep within the menus, but it's also true that some of my most commonly needed items have been very conveniently placed---holding down the # key locks the keys so that my small children can do no harm, and holding down the * key stops the phone from ringing.
Rating:
Summary: It's all true
Review: All the complaints about this phone are true. It's about the most sophisticated phone I've ever seen, but, in the end, it just falls short. I agree with all the other complaints I've reads, and I want to add this one: The batteries [are bad]. THey're cheap rechargeable batteries. And while some might think this makes it easy to buy replacements, I'd more concerned with the fact that they don't hold their charge very well and die every 2-3 weeks.
Rating:
Summary: you better buy extended warranty since it breaks often!
Review: After extensive research I decided to buy this phone.
Well, the first one I bought broke after 2 weeks - the LCD display got screwed up. Since I liked the design and features I went to the store and exchanged it for the same model. After about 2 weeks of using it the charger on the 4200 (supplemental receiver) stopped working. I thought I would give it one more try since, again, I liked the phone. So I exchanged it. What happened next ? you guessed it - the new charger is not charging again. In the meantime I called Siemens and asked them to send me the new charger (thought it will be easier than returning to the store). They said they are "out of them" (boy - now I know why!) and they can send me the whole receiver and I will have to keep the charger and send them back the receiver. To do that they wanted my credit card number. Also they mentioned [a] charge that will appear on the bill but I should "disregard it".
That's the whole story. All in all - bad customer service, and the phone with great features that is broken is just a BAD phone. I will return mine tomorrow.
Rating:
Summary: overengineered, but the inner geek in me couldn't resist...
Review: ok, confession time: i was intrigued--or is it drawn in?--by all the seemingly cutting edge voice controls that the siemens boasted of. not to mention, it looked to be a much more attractive (both in terms of feature set and product design) package than either the higher end panasonic or sony models that i was considering (what is with all the dorky pseudo space-age looks of technology today?!). as another reviewer mentioned, and i will corroborate, the siemens is a puzzling blend of both elegant and inelegant solutions. how can it be so stylish, compact, and so well thought out on some things (the speakerphone; answering machine on the phone; ergonomics; time-sensitive settings; voice features) and at the same time so ridiculously bad (no MUTE!; no headset port; every action requires you to consult the ill-written manual; cuts off messages after 10 seconds even after programming it to record up to 120 seconds; extraneous, unnecessary features that bogs down the already clunky interface). it's like the whole phone was manhandled to death by engineers. on the good side, this phone has everything you might ever need. but it seems to me that the designers need to carefully weigh WHAT features will be used and WHEN and HOW. perhaps designed the functionality with some *hierarchy* in mind, perhaps? or considered what would be more appropriate as a hardware solution rather than a software solution? (a great example of this would be to have a hard key/jog dial to change the speaker volume rather than having to fumble around with the LCD while your caller is still talking). as a result of such poor design decisions, it's very easy to subject your unfortunate caller to bad "hold" music, and next to impossible to turn off the sound on the answering machine if someone happens to call you in the middle of the night (or if you don't want to broadcast your incoming messages to the whole world). despite all of its design shortcomings, i still rather like this phone. its sound quality is an improvement over my old Panasonic 900 MHz cordless; i don't have to fork over extra money to telcos since the answering machine sounds professional (as in it doesn't sound like an answering machine, but rather like voice mail); i can add additional handsets and what more, these extra handsets have some innovative features like sending incoming calls directly to specific handsets (handy if several people share one phone number); and i don't have to have something that resembles an overzealous 10-yr old's lego project on my counter. this is not a phone your grandma would use, but if you like gadgets or you're a technophile or if you have a photographic memory (for all the arcane features!), then this will probably be a fun phone to tinker with. and don't forget to program all your important birthdays and appointments into the phone now!
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