Attractive Digital Answering Machine with Clear Caller Display (BT Reveal)

Member Name: ermine

Product:	BT Reveal
Date:	28/08/09 (32 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks good, easy to read display even across a room, good sound quality.

Disadvantages: Inconsistent user interface, need to clear messages and calls register separately.

I bought the BT Reveal to replace an ageing tape based answering machine. Though it was expensive, I was taken by the looks and digital tapeless is obviously the right way to go.

This is a frustrating product - it does some things really well and some things not so well. On the plus side, it looks good, sound quality is fine, both as a phone and as an answering machine. The clock display on the back of the handset is handy, and doubles up as a caller ID display for incoming calls if you subscribe to your operators caller ID service.

If the caller is in the phone's list of contacts, the caller's name is displayed rather than the number, which is a nice touch, and the display is big enough and bright enough to be visible from across the room. The phone list can be transferred from a SIM card from a mobile phone, which is a neat trick and can save lots of keying in of names and numbers.
It can also detect if the line is in use from another phone, flashing the blue illumination on the base station, which is a nice touch so you don't end up barging in on some else's call.

Usability Could Be Improved With BT Reveal Answering Machine

On the downside it must have been a Friday afternoon in the usability department when this phone's software was designed. The base station flashes is a call has come in which wasn't picked up, but you have to tangle with the menu system to clear both any messages and separately the list of calls. I would have thought that once you clear the message the phone should have been bright enough to clear the associated call, rather than making you go through that again.

While the flashing blue display draws attention to a call that hasn't been picked up, this phone does not sense that another extension may have picked the call up, and the flashing is attention-grabbing enough that I seemed to spend a lot of time clearing the list of received calls to stop the blinking light!

BT Reveal Handset Ergonomics

Form may have taken precedence over function with the curiously designed handset - it is ever so slightly convex, which means if the earpiece is pressed to the ear the microphone is a little bit further from the mouth than normal for phones. People didn't seem to struggle at all on the other end but if the handset will be used in a noisy environment I could see this might be an issue.

Overall from a usability point of view my old analogue tape Response 300 answering machine was far better thought out than the Reveal. and I was not too sad when this answering machine was taken out by a lightning strike. I replaced it with a BT Verve 450 answering machine bought for a fifth of the price off Ebay which is a joy to use and far better thought out, though I have to admit that on looks alone the Reveal was more attractive!

Summary: Looks good and sounds good but the awkward operation is tiresome.

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