But it's no less easy to use or functional for that, and the Granite gives you all you really need from a cordless: decent capacity, 100-name phonebook with 15 ringtones that can be assigned on a per-caller basis. If you have more than one handset, you can use them as an intercom system, and each will work on speaker too.

There's a stand attachment to raise up the basestation

The call quality is adequate rather than outstanding, whether through said speaker or the earpiece. There's no headset socket, by the way. We didn't have any trouble chatting away while walking up, down and around the three floors of our Victorian north London home.

There is a text messaging facility, but it's sub-optimal. Sending texts worked fine - apart from the fact they took a good five minutes to arrive. Incoming texts took a while too, but were delivered as voicetexts - which we couldn't play for some reason. BT's robogirl told us to "contact your service provider", which is... er... BT.

The attractive base-station operates as an answerphone and recharge point, which brings us to the Granite's battery life - or, rather, lack of it. Even after the 24-hour charge, the handset's battery died after two-and-a-half days away from the charger. Not a problem if you're the sort of person who dutifully drops your cordless onto the charger every evening, or leaves it there permanently, but we tend to carry us around with us when we're working at home. Our current cordless, a five-year-old NiMH-powered - two AA-sized cells - Panasonic lasts for a lot longer than that.

The answerphone's limit is 12 minutes of calls, which is clearly rather less than the 30 minutes offered by ye olde Panasonic, but undoubtedly adequate for most folk. Half an hour's overkill, we'd say, unless you're an obsessive message saver.

Verdict

BT's Granite is a lot better looking than many of its DECT rivals, but for all its slimness, it feels cheap - especially when BT wants the best part of 80 quid for it. It delivers a decent set of DECT functionality and delivers it well, but you can get the same features for a lot less if you shop around, especially if you forgo features like text messaging. BT's own Freestyle 335 can be had for £24, for example. It's uglier, but who really cares how such a utilitarian product looks? With the Granite, you're paying for the styling. ®

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