SofaBaton X1 Universal Remote Control with Hub - All in One Smart Remote Control with Customize Activities for Bluetooth IR 2.4G Devices Compatible with Alexa

Atrocious. It wasn't exactly difficult to set up, if like me you're familiar with accessing the advanced settings on your router to find device IP settings. Beyond that, after spending an age programming every button one by one into the "hub" the remote itself has a menu with font like you used to see on Ceefax in 1981, and half the buttons didn't work. At that point I gave up and put it back in it's box. Promised a lot, delivered nothing. Don't waste your time or money.

It is a minor/major pain to set the device up ... but persistence is required.1. Setup your devices.2. Setup your activities (e.g. sequence to power up certain devices and channels).I found that the tv device stopped working for no apparent reason. If you delete it u lose your activities. But playing with the hub rebooting it fixed the issue. So a few niggles.But after initial setup: I can control all my devices.I found the setup easier than harmony elite remote (and more successful)I found the button arrangement not to be the best (e.g. back button on top left) and no touch screen.So 4 stars because of the setup niggles, the harmony remote device is better (but out of support), If it could arrive and be setup in 2 mins it would be 5 stars.

It's only been 24 hours, but I couldn't deal with another minute of the Sky Stream remote dying. So far I'm really happy with the X1. It connected to my LG TV and Bose soundbar easily. Connecting to the Amazon Fire TV was as simple as adding a Bluetooth remote (and the app guides you through setting it up).Setting up the Sky Stream / Puck was a little bit more work, but not the end of the world. I just needed to teach the hub every button on the existing remote. Overall setup time from start to finish was about 30 minutes.The only downside I have found is the remote can ONLY be charged with a USB-A to USB-C cable (supplied). If you have a C-C cable, it just won't work.

The device has potential but needs a software upgrade to be useful

…..I have been setting up remotes for over 20years and so thought I should be able to manage this one. How wrong I was!I followed the instructions and all was well until I came to add devices. Of the seven (common) devices only 2 were on the database of codes…and neither of them would download. So I went old school and manually added all the codes via the learning section. All went well and transfered to the remote. I then sorted out activities. This was not as simple as Harmony remotes but it got there…and this is where the problems started. No matter what I did the activities wouldn’t start up the devices (even though the device codes did work). Help files didn’t help!It strikes me that this is a good product that is poorly implemented. Set up is too complicated and the app is very poor in helping. And then there are silly things. There is only a combined play/pause button…even though most of my devices have separate buttons.Very disappointing. Needless to say the item was returned.

The promise of this product is everything you want – a true universal remote that's super-compatible with all your AV equipment. The concept of the user interface is perfect. You simply define "Activities" like "watching TV" and when you select that activity, it activates all the equipment required for it (e.g. turn on TV, turn on speakers, etc.). Then it knows you're doing that activity, so when you press the "Off" button, it performs all the shutdown operations for the same equipment. This is the ultimate concept for a universal remote UI, so I was absolutely stoked to get it. It would finally make it so easy for anyone to use my media setup, without understanding the arcane code of which remotes to use and which machines to set into what mode. But sadly, it doesn't actually work.The product is let down by being temperamental and buggy. Far too often, when activating an Activity, one or more of the equipments will fail to turn on; and conversely, when ending the Activity, one or more equipments will fail to turn off. This feels to me like something that could be fixed by a software update – my guess is that it's blasting out the commands too quickly, so each separate device can possibly misinterpret the signal; and/or it's purely a bug. But I wouldn't hold your breath for any updates. Given the price of this product, it really has to actually work.It's such a shame it doesn't work because everything else about it is basically perfect. Crucially, the software is truly flexible enough to allow you to control all of your equipment, no matter how convoluted the "turn it on" procedure is. For instance, it can accommodate equipment that, in order to use it for a given activity, requires something mad like "press this button, wait 10s, then press that button twice". As an example, my project requires that you press the Off button twice to actually turn it off – this completely foxes a lot of other universal remotes – but the SofaBaton software easily accommodates this quirk. But, like I said, it doesn't actually work reliably 100% of the time, so, it's a dud.I also have to criticise, as many others have, the totally insane placement of the "Back" button. The main UI is controlled by a scroll-wheel – scroll up/down, or press the scroll-wheel inward to select. And if you want to go back? You have to change your grip entirely to press a button in a distant corner. Why is this Back button not right next to the scroll-wheel? It boggles the mind how anyone could have designed it this way.So to reiterate, it is with much sadness that I have to recommend you do not buy this product. It's got all the smell of being the ultimate universal remote, but the execution misses the mark, and sadly the result is that it cannot actually replace your remotes. I always had to keep all of them on hand, to turn on/off anything that it missed. Making the product pointless. Such a shame.