E390A Twin Big Button Home Cordless Phone with Answer Machine, Nuisance Call Block and Hearing Aid Compatibility

Very good pair of phones. Easy to set up and use, call quality better than most and good connection between the 2 phones (1 upstairs 1 downstairs). Bought these for mother and after a little training seems to have got the hang of them. You can copy numbers from 1 handset to another so only have to type in once. A few of the clever features are complex for older people but they won't really need them so best to ignore - who sends texts over a landlines?! Mum's main moan is that it doesn't stand up on its own if you have it on speaker so have to lay it down, which I get as you either cover the microphone or the speaker. Poor product testing. But in the main this phone is very good I would recommend and would buy again.

This is a very good, well designed phone. The keyboard buttons illuminate for ease of use and the LED screen is sharp and easy to read. The handset and base station ringers can go penetratingly loud for anyone that is hard of hearing, as can the handset volume, by accessing the phone's settings. In addition, there are loads of features, including an answering machine, and many, many adjustments to get the phone working to individual preferences. Also, an emergency button can be programmed to ring up to three specified numbers. As hands-free phones go, this is top of the range. Very impressed and although expensive, worth it.

Having researched a number of options I bought this cordless phone for an elderly relative - it has a number of features (for example, SOS button, loud ring, ringer options per caller, call blocker function, etc.) which are good for the elderly. Just a couple of points of note I have found: 1. It did take a little bit of time to work through the instructions to set-up and add names and numbers to the phone directory (these could not be sorted in order unless you pre-fix each name with a number). I'm not sure the set-up could be easily done by some older people. It does allow you to copy phone numbers between handsets which is useful. 2. The handset programming button is the same button as the one used for the phone directory so quite often this is pressed instead of the phone directory button - separate button would help some people

This has served us well for along time now. Like many of this sort of phone it's finding your way around that takes a bit of getting used to. (My wife hates it!) Clear answer phone with 30 mins recording time. As someone with hearing loss you can turn it up quite loud, (my wife hates that too). It has a decent range and can be used in the sun lounge outside of the back of the house (and beyond) with the base in the front room for example. Quite smart (I think my wife quite likes that bit). Clear reception and can be used on 'speaker phone' on the handset (hence handsfree if you want) as well as the base station.

For a start, the 3 boxes for this 5 set phone, came in what I would describe as a bin liner type bag,sealed and dumped in a delivery van not the usual Amazon secure cardboard box lucky there was no visible damage.The instructions are in very small print ,difficult to read and this is for a phone with bigger buttons for older people so if they need big buttons they also need some easy to read instructions, when ordering I looked at the Product Details, these stated that "10 batteries required ", I read this that batteries were an extra, so bought a pack of 8 batteries, why 8 not 10 well I did have 2 spares at home for another product, so that was extra expense, you should make your information far clearer ie. "batteries supplied" or "not supplied." Now trying to fathom out how to to set up the phones, managed to ensure the batteries were charged and have set time and date on 4 of the 5 handsets, then gave up, now having a go a registering the handsets. The only ongoing problem I see is that the base or each handset has such a small base they fall over so easily , I know that my wife with her disabilities will have trouble so I plan to secure the base/handset on the phone she will use most onto a larger more stable base. I am not an idiot I served a proper apprenticeship as a scientific instrument maker then as an engineer on the manufacture of IT equipment and hard drives, so I am annoyed particularly with the pathetic instructions with the difficult to read small symbols.

My previous BT handsets all ended up with crackly interference so I did a bit of research and the Gigaset E390 came out as being designed with the elderly in mind, I am in my 80s. As a handset the numbers are very clear, the screen is great, being a decent size and numerically clear and bright and so in this respect the handset is a good one for general use by all age groups, but that is where it stops. Trying to set up the various functions is a real nightmare. Firstly the handbook expects that one has a magnifying glass to hand, the print is that small, few of any age , could read the handbook un aided.. Then if you can read the words and symbols, the latter are not easily found or never found on the handset. My son, who is very tech savvy, gave up trying to set up the handset? This Gigaset E390 would have got 4 even 5 stars if somebody in Gigaset had given the draft handbook to an elderly relative and asked a simple question "what do you think of this book"? given them the handset and asked them to change the ring tone or block a number. Disappointed and so should Gigaset be.