General Electric (29297GE3) 1-Line Corded Phone

When my 32-year-old digital alarm clock went west, I was looking for a replacement. This combo unit seemed to fit the bill - it would replace my defunct alarm clock, as well as the cumbersome telephone that I kept on the bedside table. I found it at Wal-Mart for $28.87. It does save space, and that's a nice feature. After I set up the phone, I set about programming it and learning its features. I didn't even have to read the instructions. The good points include two separate alarms, so that if there're two of you, one can get up earlier than the other. A minor pain is that you have to remember to turn your alarm OFF if you don't want it to go off again the next day at the same time. I can live with that. With the alarm you have the choice of having it turn on the radio or sound a buzzer, whose volume you can control. There is a large SNOOZE bar, and the snooze time can be set from 1 to 9 minutes. The unit will continue to alarm for each snooze cycle until you press the ALARM OFF followed by the appropriate alarm (#1 or #2) button. There's also a sleep timer that will play the radio for a preset time, which is programmable in increments of 15 minutes, up to a maximum of two hours. The radio is tuned with a small wheel on the side of the unit, and the station frequency displays on the LCD display as you tune. You can select either AM or FM. The caller ID is a nice touch, and it stores the last 70 callers, unless you delete them (one at a time or all at once). The telephone has storage for ten memory numbers for speed dialing. If you want to call back a number displayed on the caller ID screen, just hit the DIAL button. There's also a feature that I really like - a red led that lights up if there's a call that came in since you last looked at the caller ID information. There are two buttons that control the Caller ID function - they allow you to scan up or down through the list of stored Caller IDs, which display sequentially on the display. Caller ID information for new calls is displayed until either Caller ID button is pressed once. It them reverts back to the time display. The time is automatically set to the time that the phone company transmits with the caller ID information. The display normally shows the time in very large numbers, with the AM or PM and the date displayed on the side of the screen.

The display has three small light bulbs on one side to furnish a backlight for the display, and there is a switch that offers three light levels, not including OFF (in other words, you will have at least some backlighting). Unfortunately, this backlighting tends to wash out the LCD display, so that the display is hard to read, day or night. There is a setting for the contrast of the display, but if it's set high enough to make the LCD dark enough for easy reading, it makes unused portions of the display appear as light gray figures. That's disconcerting. The handset has all the normal phone controls - number pad, memory controls, volume control, etc. Provisions are made for a standard 9 volt battery in the base of the unit. This battery will maintain all programmed settings in the event of a power outage. That's a very nice feature; I can recall many painful re-settings, after power drops, of my other phones over the years. While the use of the battery is not required, I sure recommend it.