Panasonic KX-FG2451 Plain Paper Fax/Copier with 2.4GHz FHSS GigaRange? Cordless Phone and Digital Answering System

Comment: I made the mistake of buying a Panasonic fax machine that uses ink film. The images are good and the phone features are OK. But boy do they waste ink film!!!! We live in a lighting prone area and have to unpug often. Every time you turn this unit back on, or make a copy, or print a fax, it simply chows ink film. And, of course, it always seems to run out without warning right when you are about to print a very critical document. Well over half of my last roll was unutilized. Waste, waste, waste. Did Panasonic design this machine to advance film unnecessarily and thus force people to buy their expensvie film rolls more often? Well, they helped me to advance to another brand. Incidentally, at my office I still have an old thermal Panasonic phone/fax that works great. It was a real quality unit.

Comment: It does the job but the speaker in the answering machine playback is so tiny that it is very hard to understand. To bad because otherwise it is a good machine. Unfortunately, combo fax/answering machines are hard to find nowdays so you' re stuck with this one. As I said, it does the job but the playback feature has such poor audio it is very hard to understand.
Then, the cordless phone is small and awkward to hold and the buttons are to damned small for a normal sized westerner to use.
I bought this to replace the previous generation model that quit working consistently after years of use. The features on this one are easier to use but the overall quality doesn't match the old one.
To bad.

Comment: It was hard to find a fax phone w/answering machine. They seem to be going the way of the dinasours, but this one is great. The phone could be a little larger for bigger hands, but it is fine for me. Works really well

Comment: The product works well. It was quick and easy to set up. The messages on the answering machine are clear and understandable. It does not take up alot of space since it is compact and attractive.

Comment: In the context of looking for a an all-in-one without spending a lot of money, the KX-FG2451 fits the bill. I was looking for a fax machine that had a cordless phone with a speaker phone feature. The choices were fairly limited but the Panasonic appeared to offer the best mixture of features and price. It is very simple to hook-up and use. It performs adequately on all measures but is far from best of breed in any category.

The range is pretty good on the cordless phone (easily 50'+) and sound quality is fine but certainly not on par with higher end models. The buttons are easy enough to use in most modes although I found in speaker mode when you have to press a variety of buttons to drill down in the automated systems that the communication between the phone and the automated services becomes jumbled.

Lastly, the one issue is setting it to answer faxes automatically entails having the phone become the answering machine, too. I can't see how to override that feature so I had to set it to a manual mode (turns off answering machine). I don't get a lot of faxes so that didn't matter to me but for those that want their current system to handle voice messages this could be a factor.