BT Décor 2600 Corded Landline House Phone, Home Phone, Advanced Nuisance Call Blocker, Call Block Button, Handsfree, Mute Button

An elegantly straightforward and easy to use phone plus answering machine. The menu is easy to use with almost all of the facilities simple and intuitive to access and use. The call blocking facility and its associated features make the purchase worthwhile by themselves. I do agree with some other reviewers who have pointed out the phone is very light. A little more heft to the unit would be welcomed, likewise an option to illuminate the display panel to make reading the messages easier.

I've always held genuine BT branded products to be good and reliable, although invariably rarely the cheapest. This corded housephone is well up to that standard although took a bit to get used to setting up, address book, features. The separate wires (one for power) is a bit of a problem, which I solved using an intertwining coiled wire cover (not supplied). Yes, I recommend. 4 stars.

This is a good landline phone providing you are able to set-up names and numbers of friends, family and other wanted callers by typing in their details using the buttons. If you are OK with this it will cut out all nuisance and criminal scammer calls. With calls not on your list a virtual assistant will ask them for name and details before allowing the call to come through. If they are genuine people who want to get in touch with you then there is no problem, but scammers will just hang up. Since we bought this phone four weeks ago we have not had a single scam call. Before that we were getting on average one or two of these calls each day. The advantages of this phone are: no scam calls; instruction booklet that is relatively easy to follow; caller display that is powered from the phone line so no batteries are needed. The disadvantages are: caller display not as clear as on the BT2200 but that phone needs 4 x AA batteries to power the display; not as easy to set-up as the 2200 which is a simpler phone, but without caller blocking facility. I am so pleased we bought this phone because who wants to listen to crooks ringing up attempting to steal your hard-earned cash. A great phone for vulnerable people if they are able to get someone to set it up for them.

We initially purchased two of the Decor 2200 phones for an elderly relative some while ago which provided a good, simple and basic phone that, together with some standard BT features including Call Protect, served her needs. However, now that her dementia has become significantly more of a problem, we needed to lock her phone down much more tightly to protect her from potentially fraudulent calls and even more well-meaning calls that might add to her confusion. The Decor 2600 is a much more complex phone but the features on it have enabled us to achieve this to a large degree. We wanted to restrict incoming calls to a very limited number of contacts, which this phone has enabled us to achieve. To avoid any confusion, the two Decor 2200 phones (one in her sitting room and one in her bedroom) have been retained and the 2600 added in a remote spare bedroom and is effectively invisible to her. Many of the features on this phone such as the “Announce” feature are far too complicated for a dementia sufferer so we have set it with the call blocker on and the answer phone features set as below but with the final answer phone setting turned off. This results in only callers on the Contacts list being allowed straight through and for these the 2200 phones ring as normal. All other callers, whether or not they are on the blocked caller list, are intercepted and hear a message informing them that the line is protected and then closes the call. Getting there was quite complicated. The steps from the menu to get there are as follows: 1. Reset 2. Time & Date? – Set as required 3. Turn on Call Blocking? – YES 4. Add Contacts? – ADD (unless Contacts already added) 5. Answer Phone? – OK a. Answer Mode? – ANSWER ONLY b. Answer Settings – Answer & Record – Message Alert? - OFF 6. BT Call Blocking – Mode? – ANSWER PHONE 7. Settings – Ringer Volume? – OFF (Min Volume is Off – this ensures that the 2600 does not ring and only the 2200 phones ring) 8. Answer Phone (button top left under screen)? – OFF Note: It is important that the number for local calls are entered in full with the area code included even if you live locally and are on the same exchange. Also, we set it up initially on our home line and then plugged it in at the elderly relative’s home. For some reason, this resulted in our number being rejected even though on the contacts list. Set up again on the elderly relative’s line it worked as expected. A blocked number will result in the 2200 giving a short half ring but the message and call closing cuts in before any call can be taken. On a separate matter, some have questioned the issue of power. Both the 2200 and 2600 phones are both being covered here and the questions and reviews indicate some confusion. Both get their power for the actual phone through the external telephone line but some of the additional features require a further power source. The 2200 is the basic model and requires 4 x AA batteries, whereas the more advanced 2600 has call blocking and answerphone features - for this the 2600 has a mains adapter rather than batteries.

When I bought it, I didn’t know whether it would be compatible with a Virgin Phone line, but I needn’t have worried, because it does. It’s great not having to listen to cold callers or scammers on the phone. Basically, I’ve keyed in everyone’s contact numbers that I want to get through, and everyone else will have to listen to the short message, telling them that the call is being screened. If they still want to be put through, they have to announce who they are, so I can decide if I want to talk to them. What I’ve found, is that only a few people will announce who they are, and everyone else (I.e. cold callers) won’t bother. When I see that someone has phoned, and not left their name, I usually look their number up on a search engine like Google, to see if it’s a recognised company and I often get directed to a website that tells you if they are a known nuisance caller. When I find they are, I just press the ‘block button’ where it displays their number and it will ask you if you want to block them (so if you’ve made a mistake, you can cancel that request). If you don’t want interruptions from unknown callers, or if you have an elderly relative that could fall victim to a scammer, this will give you peace of mind. I’ve actually bought one for my elderly mum as well.

Looks great, but has a few problems! It’s very susceptible to mains transients: every time I switched my desk light on (or the vacuum cleaner in the next room) it reset and asked for the time and date to be input – I fixed this by connecting it to the mains via a “Mercury 429.649 anti-surge socket” for £6.55, also from Amazon. The Decor 2600 works as an answering machine, but lacks an excellent feature that my recently deceased ‘BT Response’ had, which was to automatically dial and record 1471 after each messages so I knew who had called. The ‘Call Guardian’ feature is quite complicated to set up and doesn’t have a simple way (that I can discover) just to block all calls that are from withheld numbers. The Call Guardian system is obviously meant to be used with this as as your ONLY phone; but you can use the Decor 2600 along with others (although they will ring normally which kind of defeats the object). Finally, the sound quality of the answer machine is a bit woolly. (But the audio on the phone’s fine.)

Works as advertised. The manual’s good. Only niggles: sound quality on speakerphone is adequate rather than good, and you can’t edit stored phone number lists (unless I’ve misunderstood): the only options are to add numbers or delete them all. On the plus side, so far the call blocking feature has deterred all scam calls and let all honest callers through. It’s great! You just turn on call blocking, and any caller whose number isn’t stored in the phone gets a short message from the phone asking for their name to get past the call blocking feature before the phone rings. If they do, the phone rings, you receive a short message from the phone replaying their name while the display shows the caller’s phone number, and the phone tells you what button to press to either accept or reject the call. Scammers just hang up and the phone never rings (the display tells you about those calls and the caller’s phone number) and it’s very easy to store a caller’s number in either the phone book or whitelist.

We purchased this phone so we could ditch all our DECT phones as we rarely receive anything important on our landline now, 99.9% of calls go to our mobiles and we make most calls on them too. Most calls on landline are scam callers anyway. The phone worked straight out of the box: it was quick and easy to set up. Be warned though, the display isn't very bright at all, so make sure you locate it in a place where there is a light or plenty of light so you can read the display. We bought this mainly so that we'd have a phone that worked in case of emergency - power cut etc - but recently our broadband / landline provider switched us over from traditional copper PSTN line (BT plug into socket on wall) to a VoIP service (now has to plug into router) as PSTN is being switched off at the end of 2025 and so everyone in the country will be forced into using VoIP (also called Digital Voice by BT) for calls if they want a 'fixed line'. So this phone now has to be plugged into a router, which of course relies on power. Such is life! But, for anyone in this position who is worried whether this phone will work plugged into a router or not, it will. You have to plug the phone cable into a simple VoIP adapter and connect that into the TEL port on your router and voila, it works as normal. Same functions. It just won't work if there's a power cut.