PANASONIC Cordless Phone System with Answering Machine, One-Touch Call Block, Enhanced Noise Reduction, Talking Caller ID and Baby Monitor - 5 Handsets - KX-TGF545B (Black)

I bought this 4-phone KX-TGF574S Panasonic phone system to replace my 9 year-old KX-TG6544 phone system. There was nothing wrong with the old phone. It worked just fine after 9 years of fail-free operation. So why buy a new system?I bet many of you are like me in that I get far too many damned robo-dialed "spam" phone calls. They drive me crazy! And because I am a Comcast phone subscriber, I use their NoMoRobo to cut down on the spam calls, but NoMoRobo has one fault (not of their making): there is always ONE ring that comes through before NoMoRobo hangs up on them. You'll be in bed trying to sleep and here comes one ring to jar you out of your dreams, and then ... the ringing stops. GRRRRRR.....!The one-ring problem is no one's fault because of the way CallerID works. When a phone call reaches your home, the digital CallerID information does not arrive until AFTER the first ring. That's just the way CallerID works. Thus, no one, or no one machine, knows who is calling until AFTER that first ring. Therefore, NoMoRobo cannot do anything until after that first ring is finished, which is why you always get one ring before NoMoRobo can step in and react. For that matter, NO smart phone system can react and hang up on someone until AFTER that first ring. Blame it on CallerID and nothing else!All of this got me to wondering "there HAS to be someone who understands this issue and who makes a phone system that lets you disable the first ring of all of your calls." If you had a phone like that, then you would be home free. The first ring still arrives at the phone, but the phone itself suppresses that first ring (while allowing all subsequent rings). But by this time, NoMoRobo has had a chance to assess "friend or foe" and hang up if it's a "foe" that is in their database. What this means is no more of those highly-annoying one-ring phone calls that disrupt your tranquil life.After doing a little research, I found that ALL Panasonic phones these days have incorporated this feature! Hot damn, I said, and I settled on this particular KX-TGF574S model only because it looks pretty much like the old system, but is updated a little bit including this new one-ring-disable feature. I don't care about any of the other features. All I want is to eliminate the annoying spam phone calls!To enable this feature, turn to page 36 of the instruction manual in the "Call Block" subsection. Here's the short story:MENU --> SETTINGS --> CALL BLOCK --> ONE RING FOR BLOCKED CALL --> select NO.For some odd reason, "no" means "do not allow the phone to ring on the first ring tone." It's a bit counter-intuitive to me, but that's the way it is. Save this setting, then hit the phone's OFF button. After this, the first ring will never be heard (although you WILL see all of the phone's LCD screens light up when the call comes in, just no sound). And if NoMoRobo is working and detects that the number is a spam call, it automatically hangs up on them. That kills all subsequent ringing, meaning your phone will not sound whatsoever for that one call. Problem (almost) solved!Unfortunately, NoMoRobo is an imperfect system. Robo calls still make it past their system if the spoofed phone number is not in their database. I have found that the calls that usually make it past them are ones that have the same prefix as my own. For instance, if my phone number were 123-456-7890, then a call with the prefix of 123-456 usually gets past them. But there are others that escape them. I just had one this morning from allegedly a part of the state where I know no one. So what to do?This is where the second useful feature of the Panasonic phone system comes in handy, especially if you do not have access to NoMoRobo to help you out, but it takes a bit of effort on your part to incorporate. The phone has the ability to store 3,000 phone numbers if you are willing to take the time to enter the information of people you WANT to hear from. It consumes a fair amount of time because you're stuck entering NAME and PHONE NUMBER on the numerical keyboard, no easy ting to do. (It's the same way cellphone texting USED to be!) BUT, if you're willing to do it, then you should. What you do this, you are creating a WHITE LIST. That is, "these are people I WANT to accept calls from." Family, friends, doctors, etc. You COULD use the phone's BLACK LIST feature, but this is a fruitless endeavor because the phone's ability to store blacklisted numbers is very limited, 250 numbers maximum. Phone spammers chew through bogus phone numbers far faster than you can enter them in your phone and overflow its storage capabilities. Black listing never works, but the white lists do!Here's the key thing to do: enter all of the names and numbers of people you want to hear from in the phone. I made something like 50 entries like this, and it probably took me 2 hours to do (I'm very slow at alphanumerical texting). For each person/number you enter, make sure you assign them to a single "group." I chose Group 4, but it's arbitrary. Group 4 is as good as any. I then re-named Group 4 as "White List" but you don't need to do that. I just did it to make it obvious what Group 4 is used for on my phone.Now for the secret sauce: once that's all done, then you have the ability to assign a different ring tone to that group, one that is different that the phone's default ring tone. The Panasonic phone offers a lot of goofy ring tones that are quite distinctive. Chose one and assign it to your white-listed people (Group 4 for me).Once you have done that, then whenever your phone rings because the spoofed number got past your NoMoRobo filter, if that number is in your white list, the people you WANT to hear from, your phone will ring with the distinctive ringtone that you just assigned above. No longer do you have to get up to SEE who is calling by reading the phone's caller ID information on the LCD screen. No, you can let your EARS do the filtering rather than your EYES! When you hear that distinctive ring, you know to get up and answer the phone!I still get mad as hell at the idiots who get through my spam filtering system and want to personally hang up on them (like that will do any good). Thus, when I do get the now-very-infrequent spam call, I recognize it by the standard ringtone and quickly get up to get to the phone. I do a fast check of the CallerID information on the screen, which usually says it's from some part of the country that is unknown to me, and quickly hit the CALL BLOCK button. The phone then gives me the menu option "Block call?" Choose YES, and the phone then hangs up on the call while also storing that (bogus) number in its blocked call memory. Now if they call back again using that number, as they often do, the phone will automatically hang up on them and you won't ever know what happened! I.e., you won't hear the phone ring at all, as intended. Of course, your phone's blocked call memory bank will eventually fill up. When that happens, you select the ERASE command to clear all the numbers, hoping that by now those blocked numbers are no longer being used, as is often the case.After doing all of that, my house has been much quieter. I used to get 2-5 spam calls a day. Since I got this Panasonic system about 4 weeks ago and created my white list in it, I have had only 5 spam calls. It is not a perfect solution, but I finally feel like I have control over my phone system again.Sorry to take so long describing all of this, but I'm sure that many of you will want to know how to cut down on your spam calls. This is my way of doing it.

I very much like the usefulness of this SET of phones that give me easy access around the house and in the garage. They have an excellent RANGE - without - the range booster.I am in the process of implementing this later version of the phone and looking forward to blocking more of the automated calls which waste much of my time by DISTRACTING me as they come in and as I wait to EVALUATE the contact!A DRAWBACK for me is that (1) Panasonic doesn't offer this AS a set with all 6 handsets, (2) that it doesn't SUPPORT MORE than 6, (3) that Amazon doesn't consistently offer it WITH the 6th handset as one of the suggested items FOR the order so the MATCHING handset is already identified for the customer!The LATEST version at this time doesn't even HAVE additional handsets AVAILABLE FOR order and it has the interesting feature of being able to record CONVERSATIONS! Pity its capacity is only 18 minutes! I have a number of calls that last over an hour!!I've used this Panasonic for MANY years and will remain with them. It could well stand to have a wider selection of 'ring tones' and it would be even better if ring tones could be assigned to CALLERS as is the case with cell phones.On this model, I DID use "Link to CELL" to download my Android's contacts! THAT was EASY when I finally understood it!!

This is an excellent house phone for wide coverage. I bought this one to replace an older Panasonic system which was showing it's age. I have a handset in four rooms which pretty much gives me close access everywhere in my house. (Need more access? They have models that go up to 6 locations.) It's features are very good.

I bought another brand and even with the DSL filters they were still garbled-I had Panasonic phones before and they were very good also-tried a cheaper phone set and sent them back and decided that just a few dollars more I could get the Panasonics. Glad I did!!

Have not been able to raise the volume to an acceptable level.

Es buen teléfono, cumple con mis espectativas y sus funciones son suficientes para el lugar donde yo trabajo.Lo que más me gusta es el botón CALL BLOCK y el INTERCOM, ya que puedes poner la llamada en espera y comunicarte con los otros auriculares para pedir que alguien más tome la llamada. El único pero que le pongo, es que creo que es muy caro. Pero en general, todo muy bien.

Works very well. Love it

Would love to use this. However, it doesn't work in Singapore

Shipped to Australia with EU plug and 120Volt chargers. We need 240V chargers. None of them work.Annoying. Dont know what to do as I cant talk to someone.

He probado varios y este ha sido la mejor opción para una casa grande, incluso los ancianos lo encuentran fácil de utilizar.