Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)It shows up CID right after the first ring, while the Panasonic does it after two rings. The Uniden 2080 does not show caller's name even if the CID is already in the phone book, while my Uniden 1560-2 does! Panasonic is the worst, it scrolls the name and then the phone #; plus, as I just said, it takes one more ring to get CID. When you finally see the caller's #, it is too late, the answering machine is activated.
Although I like the idea of normal AAA NiMH batteries, Panasonic stupidly force them to be charged in the stock charger only. If you put a pair of fully charged batteries into the Panasonic, it keeps saying (via voice) "charge it for 7 hours", until you put the handset into the charger for a while. This defeats quite the point, you still cannot charge the batteries and swap them.
This Uniden uses a battery pack, but the battery chamber is huge (designed for AA). I bought an AAA battery holder from RadioShack and, after some modifications, put it into the handset. Now I can swap NiMH batteries and never have to put the handset back into the charger. Love it. You cannot do this with Uniden 2080 that has a very small battery chamber.
Sound is loud and clear. The Panasonic has annoying background noise. Oh, you'll love the big transparent back-lit keys with superb tic arc feel and the letters are printed underneath - they won't wear out. The rubber key bars on 2080 are garbage.
Some other features worth of mentioning: you can copy phone book entries from one handset to other handsets. You can inte'com or page any or all other handsets and transfer or conference a call. You can make calls private to other handsets. You can assign 8 personal rings for different callers. Voicemail indicator and button, pause button, mute button, speakerphone button and redial 5 numbers.
If you don't need the answering machine, the Uniden 1560-2 sold for $29.99 from your local HomeDepot stores is a steal. If you need more than 2 handsets, you can buy two 1560-2. You can also use any DCX150, DCX200 and DCX300 handsets, but each cost $30. Although you can use 2080's handsets on 1560, they still won't show caller's name that's already in phone book. You can register a handset to multiple bases; so there is no problem to use two or more 1560-2 for a single line (i.e, extra bases are used as chargers only). If you like, you can use them like multi-line phones which are very expensive.
The only thing missing is headset jack, which I don't care but may turn down some people. One other concern is durability. My 900MHz Uniden just died after a year of light use. That's why I'm in this market and this time I looked at the Panasonic first.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Uniden DECT 6.0 Silver Cordless Digital Answering System with Caller ID and Two Handsets (DECT1580-2)
