The market for cordless handsets that have answering systems built-in, is very hot with many many offerings.

The SLIM8800-3 or -2 rank amongst the best I have used. If you purchase either the three handset Model -3 or the 2 Handset Model -2 of the 8800 you are on a winner, and it can easily expands by buying additional handsets up to a max of 5.

Looking at the basic operation you will find that there is never any interference whilst you continue a conversation no matter where you are at home – From the Throne to the Bedroom to the upper stories or lower stories and even out washing the car; these phones never have any distortion what so ever and their range from their base set is awesome – I have even taken one of my handsets whilst visiting my next door neighbour.

By far, the best thing about operating the 8800 is its ease of use. Thank God someone has realised that multi- toggle switches are almost impossible to use especially for guys or anyone that has larger or normally sized fingers. If your a guy with larger hands and finger you will know all about fighting a multi-toggle switches – You know, that round toggle switch which is supposed to perform just about anything bar making coffee; and are the biggest hangover from the year 2000 and thats where they should stay!

The 8800 is really easy to customise if you want to. The 8800 is also perfectly balanced and you can hold it between your neck and chin whilst leaving your hands free – Its beautiful and well balanced and Yes, Oricom do pay that much attention to all their products. If, for what ever reason, you need really big buttons on your phone, Oricom has a distinct category of phones that are under the heading of Dexterity. You can see all Oricom Phones that are in the section marked by Dexterity on the first page of their Web Site!

Although the 8800 is so simple to use make NO mistake they also offer more functionality than some small switchboards. Their ability to turn on or bar any outgoing calls to say, 1900, or 1100 or 1234, or an area code like 02,03,07..etc. Is so easy to set and turn on. They have the ability to use them for Internal calls – You can have one phone is the outside shed and anyone can pick up a phone inside and call the phone is the shed. Customisation on any phone handset is done on each and every handset – You can set any call baring ON or OFF on a handset by handset basis Yes it come with a huge amount of ring tones which can be associated on a phone by phone basis.

At the extreme end of the customisation you can have an inbound call put of hold, answer your call wait and put that call on hold as you make an Internal call in order to transfer the active call and once done you can go back to your call that is still there waiting for you.

Its also nice to be able to wake any children by simply calling their handset in their bedroom or call every phone in your home – you get the picture. You can also have 1 active phone call inbound on hold, and then make an internal call and then hang-up and the inbound call is transferred to the handset you just called. Call restrictions are made on a phone by phone situation. You cannot make many global changes to effect every phone – Its done on a phone by phone basis

The amount of memory each phone has to store a complete phone book and per handset, is mind blowing. You can customise many settings but this is not an over engineered bit of kit like most modern Mobile Phone. The 8800 provides perfect use with or without any customisation. Yes you can give a 8800-3 as a birthday or present for anyone, even your parents and their parents; everyone can use them. The 8800 Model ships to you with default that will allow the phones to function perfectly without any customisation.

Its as easy to use the default settings as well as customisation you want to use but above all its so easy to change anything and has a Large Font backlit screen making it very easy to read. If you struggle to read your Mobiles display, even on it largest font and still cant read it, you can now relax.

It can easily function as an internal Intercom and has a neat setting that wont allow another handset to listen in on your conversation – The reason this option is able to be turned on, guarantees that no other member of you small business or home cannot listen in on another handset. The user guide has not suffered in translation and low-and-behold as a user guide; It gets top marks. The handsets are very robust not that I'm advocating you test this but I have drooped a few of mine and they are perfect in their solid state.

The 8800 and most other products require you to Register and new handsets. This will cause the additional new handset to negotiate permission to join your existing -3 or -2 handsets and this way NO one can sit outside of your house and hack into your voice calls – Its not going to happen as the main base station wont talk to any other device and the traffic is encrypted.

The 8800 comes with either a stainless steel or matt black design and the -n next to the product listing defines the number of handsets in a package. I bought the 8800-3 and I purchased an additional 2 handsets. You can easily start of with a 8800-2 and that may be enough – Order what you want and this may be enough but you retain the ability to add additional handsets if needed but the maximum number is 5 Including go the base station handset (Posted on 20/01/11)