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Price: $75.00
(as of Sep 18, 2025 22:41:33 UTC – Details)
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Product description
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Reviewer: Todd
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This thing is a fabulous!!
Review: I have an 86 year old mother who is hard of hearing. Having her read the words on the screen is the only way you can have a phone conversation with her. While it takes a few seconds for my words to appear on the screen, it does work quite well. Note: You should try to speak cautiously – a little slower than normal and annunciate properly. There is a person listening to what you say and trying to type it on the screen. When she forgets what I said, she can reread the words on the screen. This phone was easy to set up wirelessly, has no monthly expense and is the only way I or anyone else can communicate with my mom over the telephone. You can also hard wire with a network cable for an internet connection. There are very few extra buttons on the phone. Most notable are a yes and no button. The setup process will ask a question or give a detailed instruction of what to do when setting up the phone. The captioning service communicates over the internet and requires a separate internet connection (ie: Verizon or Comcast). The phone itself uses a normal telephone line.The phone isn’t completely full-proof. It does require my mom or someone else to push the “captions” button each time a call is made or received. FCC rules require this. You should also be aware that if your internet connection goes down, you may need to reconnect the phone to the internet. In my case, it could also be my mom pushing buttons she shouldn’t be pushing. I have one of those mothers that sometimes can figure out how to turn the volume all the way down, but can’t figure out how to turn it up again. If you have one of those moms, you know what I’m talking about! The phone volume can be adjusted. However, the volume when using the captions feature can be programmed to automatically adjust to the level you want. This keeps my mom from messing at least that part up.Thank you for coming up with such a wonderful devise! I can’t tell you how much good is does for my mom, actually being able to communicate with the people she loves.
Reviewer: The Wagners
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Hamilton CapTel 840i Real-Time Closed Captioned Telephone
Review: Great phone! The volume is great…better than other amplified phones we have used, so far. The captioning works well….if you miss what is said, you can read it, and (despite a slight lag) it is usually quite accurate. You can also review what was said after the call is over…the conversation is stored and can be reread indefinitely, unless you decide to delete the conversation. The phone is very user-friendly. There are only 2 negative issues about his phone that I can think of. If you intend to use the captioning, the call must start on this phone…meaning, if a call is picked up (or made) on another phone in the house, and then this phone is used later, during the same call, the captioning will not work. Also, the captioning doesn’t work for calls made to numbers outside of the United States. Overall, this was a smart purchase for us!
Reviewer: d2
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good product, great support, wifi problems
Review: Edit (2013-Feb-22): I ran ethernet from hub to phone, and the system has hiccup’d only once since. Either their wifi is poor or the house had interference problems (other electronics, walls/structure, or etc).Meanwhile, CapTel has been exceptionally good on their response. An email to them describing my problems and the terrible first support response led to a detailed email offering return/swap-out/troubleshooting/etc. Then another person called me before I’d even had a chance to reply, and we discussed the situation. She confirmed that occasionally wifi problems (like a signal that drops repeatedly) will cause the phone to lock up hard. Based on her call, last weekend we ran a dedicated ethernet line to the phone.Monday (a week since first complaint), the CapTel representative called again, wanting again to check if I was satisfied and/or do whatever reasonable to fix things. I told her what I’d done, and that the phone seemed to be working fine.So, there might be problems with the phone’s WIFI. Otherwise, it’s good stuff. The captioning delay runs from 1.5sec to 5 seconds before text shows up. The screen is active not cheap backlit LCD, so it’s crisp, readable, bright even in a dark room, and has a few text color/size customizations possible. The phone UI takes steps to be intuitive: The display has menus and instructions in full sentences to guide users, it has dedicated up/down and Yes/No buttons, the captioning button at lower right gets a bright ring-of-light when Captioning is turned on. There’s a dedicated blue ‘customer support’ button that speed-dials support. There are two different audio volume settings configurable for people using captioning vs when captioning is turned off, so the volume can be cranked to the max for dad, but turning off caption drops it back to tolerable levels.All in all, it’s a nice bit of enabling/adaptive technology, and the design shows lots of attention to usability and other features that’ll matter to seniors.I’m still docking a star for wifi problems and a design that fails to a telephone without even a dialtone until unplugged/replugged/reconfigured. A telephone for seniors/disabled that doesn’t have failsafe design is pretty lame, IMHO.================original review (approx 2013-Feb-11):Bought this for my parents, set it up, and all seemed good for a few hours.Then someone picked up the handset to make a call, and it was dead. Locked up, not even a dialtone.We fidgeted around, finally unplugged the power cord and replugged it in, and the device booted normally again. Then it made us configure network and time again.Another few hours, and again it had locked up. Unplug, plug in, reset network, reset time. Ugh. And so on, for the few days it’s been in use. When someone notices it’s locked up, we reset it and we’ve given up on the time setting.Phone is using WiFi, is about 12′ from the home router, and is plugged into a surge strip. So, mom hit that nice blue ‘cust support’ button. They told her that it was the WiFi’s fault, that she needed to buy a powerline ethernet adapter pair to route the data signal over powerline, or that she could ‘JUST KEEP REBOOTING IT AND NOT WORRY ABOUT THE TIME BEING WRONG’! Wow. Just wow.Fundamentally, am not impressed that they’ve made a phone that fails to dead, as opposed to the networked/text software failing to the device at least still being a dumb POTS phone. As for just rebooting every few hours, that sort of kills the answering machine and/or any ability to use this device to answer unanticipated phone calls, unless one wants to become a slave to the phone and constantly obsessed with whether it has locked up and needs a reboot.I’m no longer in the same city with the phone, but I’m going to try to call and talk to support. Hopefully, what mom reported from her first call was just some sort of misunderstanding. If so, will come back and adjust the review. (edit: much better support on 3 different communications with CapTel since her first phone call.)But at this point: phone seems to have serious problems with basic design, the wifi and/or quality control, and customer support is poor. 1 star. (edit: upgraded to 4 — what it offers is pretty valuable, and the company will stand behind their product and try to guide you to a working solution)
Reviewer: Sophia
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: For hard of hearing
Review: Works good for my 86 yrs old mother
Reviewer: Allen B
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The phone it self was great but it was not set up for Australia so unfortunately had to send back .
Reviewer: Theresa
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Loved the phone the only thing you can’t use it in Canada because you need the program
Reviewer: Daisygirl
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Warning – don’t buy this phone if you live in Canada:I encountered an issue with this phone which I purchased from Amazon.ca. After receiving the phone, I attempted to activate the service through the company that sells the phone, but I was informed that the service is only available for users living in the US. Amazon.ca should NOT be selling this phone, as confirmed by the company. They said that despite their previous notifications to Amazon.ca, their product continues to be listed for sale. I am frustrated with this entire experience and believe that the company and Amazon.ca should be held accountable for this oversight.I can’t give zero stars for the rating so am stuck giving one star to post this warning for others.
Reviewer: LINDSAY BARR
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Aged mother could not use product. They happily refunded.
Reviewer: Brad Austin
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great product. Only downfall was there is no service provided in Canada. Had to return the phone.
, Office Products > Office Electronics > Telephones & Accessories > Landline Phones, #Hamilton #CapTel #840i #Captioned #Telephone #Hearing #Impaired #PhonesVolume #Control..,
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