Clarity Amplified Photo Phone (P300)
by AMERIPHONE
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List Price: Our Price: $34.65 You Save: $4.34 (11%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Clarity Amplified Photo Phone (P300)
Customer Review: Major Design Flaws
Summary: 2 Stars
The short version:
1) Phone is limited to 16 digits for the memory buttons. This is prevents most long distance codes from being used. These are exactly the long numbers we bought the phone to help with.
2) The large keypad buttons and the amplifier work well but the amplifier must be pressed on with every call. A safety feature I suppose but more reaching and pressing for the user.
3) The memory buttons under the pictures require too much force in specific locations. They are not easy for some to use. If you are standing over the phone they may be ok but reaching to the phone from a chair doesn't work well. Hard to press; Hard to know if its pressed only once. Very Poor design for the intended audience.
I recently purchased a P300 phone for my 100 year old father in law. He uses a long distance service that requires 7 digits be entered prior to a long distance number. This service is fairly common among the elderly in my brief survey.
With 7 service digits, a pause, and 10 digit phone number, 18 digits are needed per memory location for one button dialing of a long distance number. The P300 apparently only supports 16. Neither their web site, spec sheet, or user manual describes this limitation. In a call to customer service I learned of the limit and I was told that the XL50 or XL40 would not have that limitation. While Customer Service was pleasant their information on the XL40 and XL50 also appears to be wrong.
The XL50 again doesn't specify a limitation that I can find on the web site, spec sheet, or user manual.
The XL40 doesn't indicate any limits in the spec sheet but the user manual states only 15 digits can be programmed.
Amerphone/Clarity should update their literature (or better yet update their product!) to indicate this limitation so that users will not purchase inappropriate products nor spend hours trying to make them do things they are unable. For a product targeted to the elderly this is a an unreasonable limitation that severely restricts the intended use for a large number of potential users.
Customer Review: Great phone for Dad w/dementia
Summary: 5 Stars
This phone really helped my father, who has severe dementia, be able to dial out to friends and family. It comes with lots of icons that you can use and a template to help you make your own. (I actually used the template to make my own with images of the people to help Dad, who barely can keep people straight by names alone.
My only complaint is that I thought the speed dial image buttons would be more button-like. That area is actually pretty flat, instead of individualized raised buttons like I thought it would be. The small issue with this is that it makes it slightly harder to visually distinguish between the areas and you have to push harder than you should in the center of the icons to make a call. I would prefer these to be actual buttons like the numbers below so it's easier for people with physical issues. I couldn't really tell the difference in sound quality, but perhaps that's because I don't have hearing issues. The ringer and sound on the phone was definitely louder than a normal phone though!
Overall, very happy with this product, especially at such a reasonable price. My father was very happy to be able to have an easier way to call those closest to him since his dementia prevents him from being able to look people up in the phone book and dial their number that way. It really helped him feel less isolated when he was in his home with a caregiver. And he got a click at how clever the technology was. Now that we've moved him in to a memory assisted living unit, we took the phone with him so he can continue to feel like it's easy to get in contact with those in the "outside world."
My father's delight and slightly increased feeling of independence made this well worth every penny. If he would have stayed in the house, we would have bought one for every phone jack.
Customer Review: Worked for about a week, then broke
Summary: 1 Stars
I ordered this for my parents. It looked like the perfect answer for them, big buttons, adjustable volume. I received it and tried it out at my house where it worked perfectly. I preprogrammed the keys, made a fancy photo template and inserted it, then packaged it up and mailed it off to my folks. I had a trip planned to visit them two weeks later, so they left it sitting there waiting for me to arrive and install it. Two weeks later, when I arrived, I hooked it up and it worked for a little while, then it stopped working. I fiddled with the wires and it hissed and crackled, worked a bit, then quit, worked and quit. After some more fiddling I figured out that the switch-hook on the phone was not working correctly. I would lift the handset, then touch the switch-hook and it would stop working, then touch the switch-hook again and it would start working. Something was definitely wrong with the switch-hook inside the phone. I disassembled the unit all the way down to the circuit board. Hey, I'm an engineer, if it needs a little soldering I am up to the job. But I found that the switch-hook component itself was defective. It would sometimes work, but then quit when I barely touched it, or tapped it on the side, then another tap and it would hiss and crackle and sometime start working again.
Overall, this is a disappointing product. At the price it wasn't worth mailing it back home so that I could then prepare the paperwork and re-mail it back for refund. We just threw the thing away and got a big button phone from the local Radio Shack. If it breaks my parents can take it back.
Customer Review: One extremely stupid and serious flaw.
Summary: 1 Stars
Both the ringer volume and the handset volume are adjustable. So far, so good. However, the ringer volume adjustment permits you to adjust the volume from extremely jarring to fire-alarm levels. My mother has difficulty understanding conversations because of the lack of clarity of nearly all phones (why can't phone manufactuers put a few more cents into the speaker instead of loading on so many features that you can hardly figure out how to use the phone? Another stupidity). This phone does indeed have better clarity than your average phone. Amplification however is no better than the 'high' setting on a normal phone. I would recommend one of the higher amplification models of this phone IF you or your loved one is so hard of hearing that they can bear the over-loud and extremely jarring sound of the ringer.
I called the company incidentally and discovered that Clarity/Ameriphone makes 30 phones for the hearing impaired. EVERY one of them has the same, excessively loud ringer, they advised me. My mother takes a few rings before she can pick up the phone. I can't in good conscience subject her to this phone's ringer. (I don't want to give her a heart-attack when I give her a call) What stupid engineering! I have to confess to being really angry right now about this stupidity. It would be so easy to remedy this situation - after all, there is a ringer adjustment; only problem is there is no moderate level. Unfortunately, I have to return this phone. Be advised.
Customer Review: Clarification on the ringer volume
Summary: 4 Stars
We bought this phone for our 4-year-old daughter, so that, if one of us is home alone with her and becomes incapacitated, she can call the other (or the police, or her grandparents) for help. (She knows numbers and has dialed phone numbers for us before, but, when we did a test run, we realized that it just takes too long for her to find the 10 digits;--and that was without the fear and panic of an actual emergency.)
Anyway, I was a little hesitant when I read the reviews that mentioned how loud the ringer is. When I took the phone out of the box, I was happy to see that I could turn the ringer off. If you or the person for whom you're buying the phone has other phones in the house and doesn't have to rely on this phone's ringer, turning off the ringer may be a good option.
I've only had the phone for a matter of hours, so I can't speak to its longevity or quality. About all that I can say is that it was easy to set up and program. There's a warning label on the receiver about how loud the voices are. I've only tried it with the volume knob slid all the way to the lowest setting, and, at that setting, it's not too loud for the non-hearing impaired.