Minor product review - I like this "thing"

I am a fan of Dect phones, we had some Phillips Omni's for a few years, then changed over to BT (can't for the life of me remember which) for the last 4 years. Reception works well, feature rich with built in answerphone, long battery life (AA Rechargeable with the BT ones) all I could ask for. Well mostly.

They were all pretty ugly. The BT ones had rechargers which gently buzzed and they suffered by being designed by engineers.

So, when we got down to a single BT phone working, it was time to replace them. It is really hard to find phones that are designed to look good and work well. Oh, there are lots of Japanese/Korean phones with more features than you can shake a stick at, which I am sure do a great job. There are a few "designer" phones, with all of the lack of good design that that entails - you know what I mean, they have to look "designed" so that we recognise the value in them. Yeah, right.

The best industrial design doesn't show, it reveals itself in use and in subtle, unobtrusive ways that just seem and feel right. And there are too many odd shaped, too glossy phone masquarading as quality. So having looked far and wide (well on the web at least) we plumped for some Magicbox Columbo phones http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-ten-bes... and I am not alone in liking them. I'd go more for 2001 than Barabarella/Austin Powers, but there is a retro feel, in the best way.

Clean lines, simple design, fully featured, without being at all showy - great design. I got three from Amazon for about £75, so not expensive at all.

The only niggle I have is the quality of the ring tones. Not up to scratch, but not a show stopper.

I'll leave the last word to Sam (age 9) who says they are great because they are "so easy to use, you know how to use them without being told." It doesn't get much better than that. Well done to Chauhan Studios for taking the time to redesign the home phone http://www.tejchauhan.com/ thank you.

Posted via email from james downes' preposterous nonsense