We barely use the house phone in our house, in fact the only reason we have a landline phone is because we have to for our broadband connection, and I have a good mobile contract deal that keeps me in contact, cheaply, with people. For this reason we decided to get the most basic and value for money landline phone to use in the house. If I were to be using it every evening I would have gone for a cordless and perhaps more stylish model, but for our purposes the Tesco Value TH100 Slimline Gondola seemed appropriate and ticked all the right boxes.

The phone itself id a light grey/silver colour and is made of a reasonable tough plastic material that is very lightweight. The unit is comprised of a base and handset which is connected by an elasticated coiled typical telephone wire. The base of the telephone has the cut off button and a small sheet of paper where you can write any important telephone number, such as your own which I always forget when I need it.

The handheld part of the phone has the buttons on the inside in between the speaker and the earpiece. These are a reasonable large size and made of rubber with white printed numbers on them. I quite like the buttons, they are easy to press and don't get stuck or the numbers fade with use. There are no added extras with this phone, you have your dialling numbers and that is it, no answerphone features or technical speaker settings. This is specifically for calling someone and talking to them, exactly what I was after.

According to the Tesco website the phone has the following features; last number redial facility, a limited phone book memory for those numbers you dial the most ( this is up to five numbers), a mute function and adjustable ringer volume, which is located on the side of the phone hand piece. There really is great value for money when buying this phone. The ring is a standard 'ring ring' and is very loud and quite high pitched, not too offensive!

The phone has dimensions of 24 cm length, 10 cm height and 2 cm width so it can fit on most surfaces easily and discreetly, it is also wall mountable. The phone is very simply to use and you can plug it in and go right away. The dials beep into your ear when pressed so you can keep track of what you have pressed. The volume on this phone is very good and loud, I never have to use the volume control on this side of the machine.

My only complaint with this corded phone would be that it feels cheap, however for £3.88 I cannot take stars off this Tesco value phone as you can barely buy any electrical/practical item for under £5 these days. We have had this handset for over 6 months and cannot fault it performance or reliability. This is available from in store some Tesco's and online at Tesco Direct, a great priced everyday phone, no glamour but practical in every way!