AT&T 1739 – Corded Digital Answering System

Review by Bond… James Bond for AT&T 1739 – Corded Digital Answering System
Rating:
I bought this unit to replace an old AT&T 1710 digital answering machine that was still working okay, but I wanted its ability to record 40 minutes of messages instead of my old 1710 model’s recording of only 10 minutes of messages. So much of this review is based on comparing the 1739 with my old, and far more basic, 1710 model…

***** 5-star excellent ratings:

***** The amazingly unbeatable $18 low price!!! A lot of electronic features for far less than what some people pay for a few months of voice mail service (and far less than what many people spend at coffee shops during a single week).

***** Lots of features and configuration options for the low price. You can choose english or spanish language presentation, the number of rings before the machine answers, a 3-digit user-defined remote access code (the 1710 only used an unchangeable 2-digit remote access code), whether to be able to listen to your outgoing announcement when the machine answers a call, whether the machine announces the caller’s number when the phone rings, whether the incoming number is stored and announced prior to message playback, whether to accept blocked (private number) calls, and whether to have the machine audibly beep every 15 seconds when there are new messages.

***** Easy voice-narrated setup of all features. You just press and hold the [Setup] button and the machine guides you through all configuration settings. A recorded man’s voice actually speaks to you and guides you through the setup process.

***** When you press the power button to turn it off, a voice speaks out, “The machine is off”. And when you turn it back on, it tells you, “The machine is on. 40 minutes to record”, telling you how much recording time is left on the unit.

***** My old 1710 model required 4 AA batteries to retain stored messages in case of a power outage. The 1739 does not need batteries to retain both the outgoing announcement and stored messages during a power outage.

**** 4-star good ratings:

**** The machine does not record blank messages or messages consisting of just touch tone beeps. My old 1710 answering machine would often record my 2-digit remote access code touch tone beeps as separate messages every time I called in to retrieve messages, but this no longer happens with the 1739. Furthermore, my old 1710 used to record blank messages where someone (usually a wrong number dialed) would not say anything and just hang up. But with the 1739, I no longer have to wade through blank messages consisting only of silence on the other end. In addition, if the caller has not spoken up 6 or 7 seconds after the beep, the unit will disconnect the call, and not include the silence as a recorded message.

**** The 1739 has better phone keypad ergonomics when accessing the answering machine remotely. On my old 1710, you had to remember a non-intuitive layout of keypad commands, or carry the pocket-sized command reference card with you when you were away from home. Now with the 1739, all of the most common commands are placed between phone keypad numbers 1 through 6, and if you do not have your command reference card with you, you can always press the ’5′ number on your phone to get a narrated help guide that describes what all possible remote commands were available.

*** 3-star not-so-good ratings:

*** The clarity of both the digitally recorded announcement and incoming messages is not much better than my very old AT&T 1710 digital answering machine. I can still understand all words and phone numbers left by callers in the messages, but they can sound somewhat garbled or a bit muffled sometimes, requiring me to replay a message a few times every now and then. Perhaps a cruder digital recording approach was used in order to make the unit very inexpensive, but I would have gladly paid $20 or $30 more in order to get better sound recordings! If you are getting static on your recorded messages, you should try plugging the answering machine into a DSL filter; this will improve the overall sound quality, but, as mentioned, I had hoped that the clarity of both the outgoing announcement and incoming recorded messages would be noticeably better than what I had on my old 1710 model… instead, the sound quality between this new unit and my old model are about the same.

*** My old AT&T 1710 answering machine used a less-bright LED digit to display the number of incoming messages. But 1739 uses a much-brighter red LED display and, in addition, has a red On/Off button that always glows red when the unit is turned on. Depending on where you place this unit, the amount of red glow that emanates from this machine can be annoying in a darkened room, especially if this machine is placed in a bedroom. You can turn off both the LED display and glowing On/Off button by turning off the unit, but then you no longer record messages. It would have been nice to be able to either turn off the two sources of red light but leave the unit turned on or, better yet, have a dimmer option to reduce the glow that comes from the unit. Of course, you can always place something over the unit to cover up the red glow, but…

*** My old 1710 had two phone jacks for connecting the unit to the phone with one phone cord and connecting the unit to the wall jack with another phone cord. But for some odd reason, AT&T decided to use a non-removable telephone cord to connect the unit to the wall jack. This is okay if the supplied 5-foot cord is long enough to reach your wall jack, but you will need an extension cord if you need to place the unit farther than 5 feet from the wall jack.

** 2-star bad ratings:

** As a test, I tried calling into the machine and leaving five kinds of short messages: “ET call home”, “This is just a test”, “Just a test”, “Call James”, and “Call me”. The machine properly recorded “ET call home” and “This is just a test”, but it did not record the “Just a test”, “Call James”, and “Call me” messages. I repeatedly tried these short 2, 3, and 4 word messages and it consistently did not record them as messages. This is bad! You may thus never receive messages left by callers who only say a few words and then hang up. There appears to be some minimum syllabic threshold required in a message in order for it to be recorded. This may present a problem if you have someone who quickly and tersely leaves a message of “Call me” and hangs up, resulting in the machine not recording the message and you not getting such a message. But, overall, I myself would consider the risk and consequences of losing such brief messages to be small since I expect most callers will leave at least a full sentence as a message, but it is definitely a potential problem with this product and I do wonder if I ever lose any quick short messages left by someone.

** When the machine announces the time-stamp for each message, it only announces the day of the week, time, and year. During Setup, you can only configure the unit’s clock for these attributes also. But knowing that a message was recorded on “Monday 3:36PM 2009″ or “Thursday 6:03AM 2009″ only means something if (a) you check your messages on a weekly basis, and (b) you do not keep old messages stored on the unit that were phoned in over one week ago. Otherwise, you may not know which “Monday” the message is referring to! This is a huge blooper of a design flaw that the AT&T engineers chose to track the day of the week but not the day of the year. I would have much preferred the unit to say “April 12 2009 3:36PM” instead of the far more vague “Sunday 3:36PM 2009″.