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EnGenius SN920ULTRA Longest Range Cordless Phone System

EnGenius SN920ULTRA Longest Range Cordless Phone System

List Price: $379.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Junk
Review: Although the range on these things are good, the sound quality is horrible. There's a constant hiss in the background, battery time is low, and the phones are uncomfortable to hold (small and HEAVY). Also, the buttons on the phone are extremly slow to react. When you start dialing you hear the tone about a second later, which is really annoying as you're dialing a number. In short, these phones are poorly built and designed, bad features, and generally not worth it even if they were half the price.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Decent for Long Range
Review: Buy only if long range is an absolute requirement and you can put up with less-than-ideal battery life.

I live in a difficult area for signal reception and tried many cordless phones. The EnGenius 920 sported a fair price for a long range phone. I initially bought 2 handsets and planned to standardize on this phone throughout my house, but eventually returned one due to the poor battery life.

There are many long range phones available, but only a few that are legally FCC certified in the United States. Most of the longest range phones use military frequencies and are sold for export only. So I tried the EnGenius because it was legally certified and the price was fair. It also has a great sized handset which is Nokia-style. It looks like a phone rather than a walkie talkie, which is nice.

The long range works for an impressive radius like down the block, across the ranch, or on different floors, but not quite long enough for boat or car use. The optional external antenna works well too. If you can reasonbly install it on a roof top or away from obstructions, it will increase the range especially in open air.

The biggest issue is the battery life. It comes with an older Ni-MH battery and claims 40 hours standby. But in actual use, if you make a few phone calls of any length and standby the rest of the time, the battery is dead by the end of the day.

Also the sound quality is not perfect, the volume cannot be raised high enough in my opinion (when outdoors in noise), and the phone echoes your own speech a little bit, which can be annoying.

Battery and sound quality reminds me of a 1990 era phone, before Lithium Ion batteries and small cell phones that seem to last forever. Even your basic home cordless phone has been designed for much better talk-ability, battery life, and comfort.

If you must have the long distance, this is a good phone. I will be keeping one of mine. But for good talk-ability and general home use, I would not buy this as your only phone. You would find it more convenient to have a couple phones, using a standard cordless phone that feels better and lasts a long time, and one EnGenius for only the times you must roam farther from the base station.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not so EnGenius
Review: For this kind of money, I'm not impressed. Poor battery life. The headset "compatibility" requires some sort of unavailable adapter in order to work with an ordinary 2.5 mm headset jack. You can't have multiple people on the same call at once. You MUST know the other persons handset number and physically transfer the call to them. The base station randomly clicks on the intercom. It also will click and emit a low-pitched tone that sounds like feedback from something. This is all without receiving a call or picking up a handset or anything.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not so EnGenius
Review: For this kind of money, I'm not impressed. Poor battery life. The headset "compatibility" requires some sort of unavailable adapter in order to work with an ordinary 2.5 mm headset jack. You can't have multiple people on the same call at once. You MUST know the other persons handset number and physically transfer the call to them. The base station randomly clicks on the intercom. It also will click and emit a low-pitched tone that sounds like feedback from something. This is all without receiving a call or picking up a handset or anything.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great range, OK quality
Review: I bought this phone because I was tired of trying to get other cordless phones to work in my sprawling house and yard - they didn't have enough range. Specifically I recently tossed the Siemens Gigaset due to poor range.

Well, this phone works admirably - it has more than enough range for a large property with no fade out. The handsets are tough and feel solid (they are really meant for factory or warehouse use). Battery life hasn't been an issue for us at all - in a home you usually keep the handsets in a charging cradle when not in use anyways. Voice quality is as good as the Siemens was. And the fact that it works at 900 Mhz is a bonus since it won't interfere with my wireless Ethernet (802.11) network.

This is an update since I've had these phones for about 6 months now: They aren't perfect. When you put the phone into the cradle to recharge, you have to put it in carefully otherwise it'll look OK, but won't be recharging. Also the recharging contacts are fragile compared to other phones and in fact I have to toss out one of my SN-920's 'cause the contacts got damaged. And the microphone on another SN-920 died. Also, the phones aren't comfortable against your ear.

My ideal phone would have the SN-920's distance with better ergonomics and better recharge contacts. Unfortunately, I don't know of such a phone.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Crisp, clear, yet odd sound
Review: I bought this phone for myself and for my mother. She loves it, I like it. I also bought the antenna (note: the antenna doesn't really seem to add much additional distance -- I'd love to see some lab tests proving out the usefullness of this add-on").

It is heavier than any cell phone you might use, yet it does work very well "down the block" in my suburban community.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Unacceptable for home use
Review: I purchased six of these phones and the four line system. The range is exceptional and that is the only good thing that can be said for this system. Within four days, one phone became defective and it took Engenius four weeks and six phone calls to repair it. They didn't know they'd received it for repairs, said they mailed it back, (they hadn't), and at least four phone calls went unreturned for days at a time. The phone takes a second or two to obtain a line, there is no ability to have specific lines ring on specific phones short of using the voice answering system, which not all home users want to do, the battery life is very short, and the phones will suddenly "crash" and require you to turn them back on. Every few days the main unit need to be powered off and on. The software is very buggy and technical support not acceptable. I would not recommend this system for home use. You will be very unhappy, unless you need exceptional range, there is nothing else to recommend it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Unacceptable for home use
Review: I purchased six of these phones and the four line system. The range is exceptional and that is the only good thing that can be said for this system. Within four days, one phone became defective and it took Engenius four weeks and six phone calls to repair it. They didn't know they'd received it for repairs, said they mailed it back, (they hadn't), and at least four phone calls went unreturned for days at a time. The phone takes a second or two to obtain a line, there is no ability to have specific lines ring on specific phones short of using the voice answering system, which not all home users want to do, the battery life is very short, and the phones will suddenly "crash" and require you to turn them back on. Every few days the main unit need to be powered off and on. The software is very buggy and technical support not acceptable. I would not recommend this system for home use. You will be very unhappy, unless you need exceptional range, there is nothing else to recommend it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: EnGenius SN920ULTRA
Review: I started with two base/handset combos, to use at a small office. By far, this has the best range of any cordless I have ever seen, and the two way between handsets is more than convenient. However, having purchased a "multi line phone", it would be nice to have access to both lines - ie. if you are on line one, and line two starts ringing, you must run to another phone to answer the second line, as the handsets are only single line units - not much good halfway across the shop. Also if you have any other electronics on line with them, {fax, computer, another phone, etc.} engenius does not check for line usage {except for its own system} before trying to dial outgoing calls {bad fax or download, interupted data transfer/call} and again you run to a phone to make a call. Not to smart for such a high tech system. Great unit for a single line, would NOT recommend it for multi line use.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good for distance, not for quality
Review: If you need the long distance, this phone will give it to you but don't expect reliability. We continually have battery problems and as another review said it has it's quirks. The handset is heavy and not very ergonomic. For the money, it's rather disappointing.


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