BT Converse 2300 Corded Telephone - Black

I wanted a replacement for a BT Converse 1300 for use at my business and thought this looked a bit of an upgrade. Looks ok but the sound is VERY unclear and muffled. Tried it on all 8 lines and everyone said the same thing and after 2 hours I gave up !! I would have returned it but the box was damaged and in the end I couldn`t be bothered. This is the reason I`ve written this review, to stop others making the same mistake and easing my concience when I look across at my new £40 door stop !! DO NOT BUY !!!!

To set the background for this, read my review of the Doro AUB300i which was our previous preferred desk phone. The Doro was a capable phone at a reasonable price but two many were breaking too quickly.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doro-DO06-0004-AUB300i-Telephone-Black/dp/B00133NYO2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1296483427&sr=8-3

So I hunted for an alternative, and accepted the extra £10 per unit to get what I hoped would be a good quality BT unit. I ordered two to begin with and put them on the desk of myself and my assistant. After my own Doro became one of the expired units I temporarily had an old (and rather battered) BT Relate 2100 standing in whilst awaited the arrival of this one. What a superb phone! So my expectations of the new Converse 2300 were high.

Where do I start? My assistant's was little better than DOA. He plugged in the power and the screen came on and went off. It never really worked again. It could make and receive calls but the screen was mostly dead (occasionally the display would come on and go off again but lasted barely seconds). He then noticed a rattle - clearly something was loose inside. RMA no 1.

Then there was mine. It worked fine but must be one of the most stupid phones I've ever used. Firstly, although it has 5 ringer volumes and 3 ringers which you can choose between from the menu it doesn't play them when you are choosing them! You have make the selection and then ring the damn thing to know what you've selected! Doh!

It is the first phone ever which does not correctly auto-set the time from our PBX. Every other unit in the company manages it except this one. It gets the time and day / month but thinks the year is 2008. No idea why, but I found it was possible to manually enter the year and override the error.

Although the red LED does light up when there is a voicemail left it was too dim to be seen. I discovered moving the setting from indicator 1 to indicator 2 (set underneath) I could make it brighter, but still not really bright enough to get your attention when returning to the office. Thankfully this is where the excellent display comes in. It is large and clear and positively shouts "MISSED CALL: 1" at you. The call log is excellent showing the date and time of the caller and whether answered or not. It also shows the name or number of the caller to the destination of the call (i.e. whether it was a direct call to me or to the department group which rings all handsets in the dept). If I was a member of multiple groups this would be particularly useful. All this information comes from our PBX and the handset understands it. However for some bizarre reason you are not able to remove calls from the log so they quickly fill with clutter. Both the Doro and existing BT units allow this - why not this one?

And here's another thing. Caller display randomly stops functioning! Sometimes for no apparently reason it just ceases to display any information from the PBX. When that happens not only do you not see who is calling but nothing is entered in the logs either. So if you happened to miss a call when the caller display was not working the phone provides no kind of alert at all. The problem comes randomly and essentially seems to last until you get another outside call. They always work and appear to "clear" the problem of not showing caller information. After that it works again on internal calls.

And another thing.... the display randomly freezes up. You can push all the buttons you like, the screen just sticks on whatever it was doing like it has crashed. And then a moment later it suddenly frees up again.

Two handsets bought, neither works properly, back they go.

I would agree that the phone is generally ok but as with many phones the hands free feature is poor, even with the "amplify" button, however this can be improved to usable if a headset is used. Display doesn't have a backlight and is very difficult to view especially if wall mounted.