It’s incredible to think about how far phone technology has come in the last couple of decades. From landlines attached to a wall to mobile phones that act as supercomputers in your pocket, the best cordless phones tend to fall somewhere in the middle of convenience and complexity.
Offering the stability, and reassurance of a landline, along with plenty of more mobile-centric features like speakerphones and Bluetooth, a cordless phone is just as important for many homes and offices as the mobile phone you take with you everywhere – perhaps more so if you do not need a mobile at all.
Here’s why you should consider a cordless phone for your home or business.
Advantages of a landline
Many of a cordless phone’s advantages stem from the fact that it’ll hook into your landline connection.
While that may sound obvious, it really does offer some big boons. For one, call quality is likely to be much better, since the base station is linked directly to your home’s telecoms rather than gasping for signal in whichever corner of your home or workplace you’re in.
Speaking of the workplace, a landline arguably makes your business appear more reputable simply because it can be tied to a physical address. This could lead to increased business for you and your company, while you can, if you’d like, set up a call-forwarding system to be able to take office calls on a mobile device anyway (the best of both worlds when you need to head out for a few minutes).
Another advantage is that a phone line is likely to be cheaper than a mobile plan, especially when factoring in data and potential handset charges.
Why buy a cordless phone in 2022?
Cordless phones work by connecting a handset to a base station that’s connected to your telephone network. While the handset is on the base station, it’s charging, but the big bonus of a cordless phone (as the name suggests) is that it’s able to be taken from room to room (and maybe even outside)
As we noted earlier, though, as long as you’re in range of the base station, your call quality is likely to be better than that of a mobile phone – particularly if your home or office has a “dead spot” where the signal won’t reach your device for love nor money.
Cordless phones are also built for calls in a way that all-purpose mobile phones aren’t; because they don’t need to slip into your pocket for most of the day, they can be a fair bit bigger which means speaker and microphone systems can be larger, and clearer.
Because they aren’t touchscreen devices, cordless phones are often a lot easier to use for anyone with vision impairments or those who are simply less tech-savvy. That’s great for the older generation, too, particularly if they do not need a phone that runs apps or browses the web. With more usable space, that means cordless phones have larger buttons which can also improve usability.
Then there’s hearing aid assistance, which can make a huge difference to anyone with hearing impairment by using a “Telecoil” system to transfer sound to the hearing aids themselves.
Most cordless phones follow the DECT standard, which applies to phones all over the world. Any phone that follows the standard will offer a series of common features, including (but not restricted to) caller display, speakerphones, and a call-waiting indicator so you know when someone is calling, even if you’re using the phone.
DECT phones also aim to offer 50m of indoor coverage or 300m of outdoor coverage. For more on DECT, be sure to check out our guide to how cordless phones work.
There are also model-specific features (although these will vary based on the make and model of the cordless phone you pick up and aren’t standardized). These can include bundling multiple handsets in (ideal if you have multiple desks within an office, or if you misplace one), as well as backup power that runs off an emergency battery to keep the base station powered up – meaning you can still make calls in an emergency.
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