Hamilton CapTel 840i Captioned Telephone (756-002600-HAM)

New server was necessary but when they were done it was beyond expectations.

I had German measles when I was only a year old, and due to the resultant nerve deafness have had to wear hearing aids all my life. I have watched hearing aid technology steadily progress from the old clip-on barrette-type aid to the all-in-the-eyeglass-temple design to the behind-the-ear style that I now wear. Because I need to read lips at the same time I hear a speaking voice (the coordination helps with the understanding), using the telephone has always been a dreadful chore that I preferred to avoid if I could. It was so easy for me to misunderstand spoken words over the telephone and so easy for me to become annoyed at myself and frustrated. When I got a closed-captioned television, it was wonderful, but I have wished for 50 years that someone would invent a closed-captioned telephone that would be advanced enough to work well. I saw an advertisement for this Cap Tel telephone in a science magazine and decided to give it a try. When I got it, I found it to be very well-packaged. The phone was very easy to set up and to use, and the instruction manual that comes with it explains everything in a step-by-step fashion that is easily understandable. I encountered some initial difficulty with the setup because I needed to first register the phone, so had to push the Customer Service button on the phone's face, but these people are right there (the connection is nearly instant) and very willing to help you (even that conversation with them came up in closed captioning, so you will understand that, too). This phone has an answering machine which is capable of translating the spoken message into a written one that will scroll across the screen as you play it back so that you can easily read it instead of having to listen to it. I think it is amazing to be able to READ without misunderstanding what I once had to HEAR and badly decipher. I love this new phone and am so happy that I have finally been able to take advantage of this wonderful technology. I would highly and enthusiastically recommend this product to anyone who needs to read and understand rather than hear and understand.

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)

We bought this phone for my 87 year old Mom who's hard of hearing. The phone's features all sound good in theory with the captioned words, big buttons, etc., but it fails in reality. Here's why:1) First, the captioning is on a considerable delay. It was just too difficult for my Mom to have conversations where there are these long silent lapses. Very unnatural and she just couldn't help but say "What" 3 times before the captioning showed up and then the caller started talking over the delayed captioning and it was just a mess and confusing. She just didn't want to have to manage that.2) The phone's audio quality is ironically really bad. They may have volume, but as most old people hard of hearing will tell you, it's not about the volume, it's about the clarity. They can hear it; they just cannot distinguish the words. This phone has a very tinny sound on its normal setting and the tone options are really impractical. The 'High" tone setting is even tinnier, and the "Low" tone setting is this muffled sound. So my Mom thought it always sounded like someone was talking through a barrel. Not even close in audio quality to her regular phone.3) It seems ridiculous in a world of cordless phones, that they have to go backwards in technology with a tethered handset, ala 1970's. My Mom really disliked the cord after years of freedom; she didn't want to go backwards.Unfortunately, no redeeming qualities to this phone. So we sent it back. We'll just look for a regular cordless phone with great clarity.