Universal remotes originally became necessary because of the multitude of remotes that came bundled with every piece of equipment in your home entertainment setup. With electronics now becoming an even bigger part of our homes with all sorts of automation products, we use remotes not just in the living room, but in nearly every single part of the house. That’s why the SwitchBot Universal Remote is designed to control devices far beyond your home entertainment system.
From robot vacuums and smart lights to ACs and a whole lot more, this thing can replace the remote for most of your home electronics, sparing you not just from having to manage dozens of IR remotes, but from having to fill up your phone with apps for every single connected electronic device you own. Suffice to say, if you use a lot of smart home devices on top of your standard home entertainment setup, this offers an easy way to streamline managing all of them in one place.
The SwitchBot Universal Remote looks like any modern universal remote, with a 2.4-inch LCD screen and a tidy selection of controls. By tidy, we mean it has less than a dozen buttons in total, along with a touch wheel, so it’s very uncluttered when compared to more traditional TV remotes.
It has infrared built-in, so you can use it as a replacement for most any kind of traditional remote for controlling TVs, music players, ACs, and many other common devices. There’s also Bluetooth onboard, so it can be used to control devices you would otherwise manage with a smartphone app. According to the outfit, it can be configured to manage up to 15 IR and 35 Bluetooth devices at a time, putting the control to 50 devices in total at your fingertips.
The SwitchBot Universal Remote is compatible with 83,934 IR remote models, allowing you to easily use it as a replacement for controlling various home appliances and electronics. Naturally, it also works out of the box with all of SwitchBot’s own products, which range from robovacs and cameras to smart locks and curtain controllers, among others. It also supports Matter, which means it’s going to work with a good load of smart home devices, both current and upcoming, making this a very useful tool down the line. Do note, it requires using one of the outfit’s hubs for proper Matter support, so it does require some extra gear. As for streaming devices, the Apple TV and Fire TV will be supported at launch, although both Roku and Android TV won’t be around until a future update.
There’s a Find My Remote feature that prompts the device to emit a sound for those times you can’t remember where you last left the darn thing, although you’ll need to use the companion app to activate it. Other features include a 2,000 mAh battery that should last you a good month or so between charges, a button lifespan of 100,000 presses, and a Scene function that controls multiple devices with one press.
The SwitchBot Universal Remote is available now.
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