I have been through many answering machines for my home. Most of them had very poor clarity of messages due to way excessive compression to squeeze out the last cent of manufacturing cost.

Only one machine was good ever, and that was an AT&T (1740 I think) but it died and indications are that many others experienced the same problem.

Can anyone recommend an answering machine?

My requirements:

1. Clarity
2. Clarity
3. Clarity
4. Remote message pickup
5. One line is sufficient
6. Caller ID would be nice, but will sacrifice if I have to.

I have searched everywhere and looked in the usual bigbox stores. All junk, as far as I can see.

Phone company voice mail is not OK. You have to pick up the receiver to check if any voice mail has come in (I do have a phone that can receive a signal from the phone company VM, but this is indicated by a dim LED behind a dark plexiglas front...). That sucks. Also, who doesn't hate those VM menus?

I just replaced my 12 year old B&O super Hi-Fi phone with a new Enzer phone from Newegg. $50 and definitely high sound quality, although not in B&O league, looks decent though and has a good speaker phone feature.

Now I've got to up the hifi on the messages.

Last resort would be to use a PC program that records WAV....