Clarity Dect 6 Amplified Cordless Big Button Speakerphone with Talking Caller Id Clarity-xlc2

Giving this phone 4 stars but that's because I don't think there is anything better out there based on what I found during my several nights of searching. Needed to replace my mother's amplified existing cordless phone because of failing batteries. It had a fatal design flaw in any case. They placed the volume buttons right where a person naturally grips the phone. My mother was constantly turning the volume down on the old phone and not understanding why she could not hear anyone on the phone. Confused her and made me wonder if they ever tested the phone with real people.Anyway, time for a new phone, this Clarity XLC2. Mostly good reviews and nothing else seems to come close with the same features. After having it installed for a few weeks and talking to my mother daily here are my impressions.1) It has ample volume for a severely hearing impaired person. My mother's hearing is bad. No hearing in one ear and partial in the other. She uses the phone without her hearing aid and often tells me it is too loud. A good problem to have.2) The volume control is a wheel on the side of the phone that, in theory, you can adjust while talking. She can't do that but I imagine most people could.3) A switch setting on the base unit allows the handset to automatically return to boosted mode if someone else uses the phone in non boost mode. This is great for me when I visit, use the phone and forget to set it back to boost. That used to be a problem with the old phone. This is a great feature. The Talk button also lights in red to indicate boost is on. Green indicates normal. This is needed because boost is just a push button so you need a way to tell.4) The speaker phone feature actually works well enough for my mother to hear. We know this because when she first got the phone she hit the speaker button by mistake. I talked to her for 15 minutes before we realized she was on speaker phone. She noticed because she could not hear her own voice very well. The speaker on the back of the handset was loud enough for her to hear me though. The downside it that she did this by accident. I don't know if this is true of other elderly users but my mother insists on pressing the phone against her face. When she does, the buttons are easily depressed. It may be the speaker button, the number 1 happens a lot and other buttons which I can't identify except for the noise or cutouts I hear. I'm trying to teach her to keep the phone away from her face but it is hard to retrain her after so many years. I do wish they had put the speaker button somewhere else. It seems to be in just the right spot to hit accidentally. TIP: there is a setting on the base unit to disable the talking keypad, this has reduced the annoyance factor a bit.5) This model is fairly light weight. No complaints from her about it being too heavy.6) DECT 6.0 works like it should, great.Overall, this is nice phone and I'm very happy Clarity provides a good solid product for people with hearing issues. I do think it could be better by moving some keys, making them less prone to accidental activation by contact with the face and lastly the contrast on the key pad is not great for people with poor vision. The numbers need to be bolder so they stand out more on the dark pads. Unfortunately poor hearing and poor eyesight tend come together as people age.UPDATE (2/10/13): After some long term use of this phone thought I would add a couple of observations. The problem of accidental button activation continues. I finally had to cut a piece off the back of an 8-1/2 x 11 tablet of paper and glue it along the side of the phone with the volumn wheel to keep my mom from pushing the buttons with her cheek. It works like a guard rail. I also have taped the volume wheel in the full on position to keep her from accidentally turning it down while holding the phone. The challenge phone designers have is where to put all the controls so they are easy to use but not too easy. I do think Plantronics needs to rethink the external configuration of this phone to go along with the well done electronic components. There is no reason for the boost button to be where it us. The volume wheel could have detents to make it less prone to accidental adjustment. The ear pad could be extended outward or angled further to get the keypad away from the user's face. Just some thoughts for Plantronics/Clarity in case they ever read these reviews.

Do not purchase this phone! I bought this phone for my 88 year old mother who has arthritic hands and loss of hearing. We were first very excited about how she could hear on the phone, but when she attempted to answer the phone, the caller could hear her, but she could not hear the caller. I called Clarity and was told that due to the voice assist option, the receiver does not always hear the caller. I was also told that they have fixed this problem on the new models but are not able to fix the models already on the market. My opinion is that the phone should have been recalled, or a warning should have been provided to potential customers. It is already very difficult to care for an elderly person, and creating more frustration for that individual is just plain wrong!

Not for visually impaired. There's no braille on the phone. They thoughtfully give you a stick-on braille warning label that's as big as the phone. It says the phone might be loud. That's not for your benefit. They're just afraid somebody might complain. They don't provide any other braille stickers which could be actually useful.Talking buttons. Some of them but not all of them. Need to know whether it's in speakerphone mode? Nope. There's a light. There's actually a lot of blinking lights in different colors which are not useful to somebody who can't see. The lights are mostly distracting.The number buttons talk. Most of the other important buttons don't. The buttons talk AFTER you let go. So, you don't know what you pressed until after you pressed it. Not so useful. There isn't any 'backspace' button when you're dialing. The talking buttons only let you know what wrong number you dialed so you can hang up and start over.I wrote to their customer service and they didn't care much. Yet another company that makes products that are supposed to help the disabled but don't. A tiny bit more thought and this could have been a good product. They way it is, no. Unfortunately most other phones are far worse. It does work. The amplified features are OK. The buttons are large, mostly. It isn't intuitive. At least they didn't put an entirely useless LCD display on it.

I bought this phone for our home. We need audio caller ID.It does that, however there is no screen to inform the phone number calling and the audio ID does not speak that information. Also if one tries to silence the audio ID when the call is coming in ( we get lots of robo calls) the silence button does not work!It does not silence the phone.Plus if one tries to adjust the ring volume, that doesn't work either.Plus every time one makes a call the phone yells out each number, rather annoying.Wish I had not purchased this.Lousy phone, features don't work.

the phone was definitely loud enough for my hearing in impaired grandma. she also cant see that well though and on her current phone speed dial numbers are programmed and all she has to do is press and hold the correct number to call. with this phone you have to press 3 buttons talk/memory(which is the small button to the right of the talk button) /then the number for the speed dial option she couldn;t see or feel the small buttons.also, i left the phone charging for a week (recommended 10 hours i think it was) before i brought it to her and bye the time i was done programming it we started to make test calls and the head set died. less than an hour. im not sure if this particular phone was defective or if the battery on the phone is just that bad. i did remove the little tape that saves the battery. either way the memory dialing was not going to work for her. i would recommend this phone if hearing impairment not vision impaired.