It has only been a few weeks since I reviewed the last smart remote and asked you all a fundamental question: Are we done with universal remotes yet? Judging by how well received the review was, we are not done just yet. SwitchBot knows this too, as they just brought the SwitchBot Universal Remote to their smart device lineup. What’s the deal with the remote?
Let’s take a closer look!
SwitchBot Universal Remote
To use SwitchBot Remote you’ll need a SwitchBot Hub. You can go for the older SwitchBot Hub Mini or more robust, equipped with buttons and sensors and display SwitchBot Hub 2 with Matter support. Either way, you are expected to drop £59 for the SwitchBot Universal Remote or £99 and £109 respectively (at the time of the writing) for bundles with Mini or Hub 2.
Unfortunately, SwitchBot shut itself with a naming convention earlier releasing a smart button named SwitchBot Remote. It means that they are stuck with a Universal Remote as a product name which is more than mouthful!
Is it good?
It’s a white, wedge-shaped remote that uses WiFi, Bluetooth and InfraRed to connect to your smart and not-so-smart devices at home. The remote is split into 2 parts – a 2.4″ LCD that hosts various information and offers 4 additional black buttons that fade into the black frame of the display. These are responsible for triggering the actions available at the bottom of the screen.
The other part of the SwitchBot Remote contains typical buttons available on various remote controllers. It offers a button highlight for night use and it’s motion-activated. The central D-pad can be changed into a smart touch scroll wheel to ease controls on various devices.
From an ergonomic standpoint, the SwitchBot Universal Remote is comfortable to use and the buttons are logically spaced. I have no problems using it with one hand. To charge up, use the USB-C port at the bottom. SwitchBot offers up to 5 months of use at a single charge. Something I was able to verify as I had it in my ecosystem for months now.
First steps
Enabling the SwitchBot Remote in the app is dead easy, use the app and pair the remote with your SwitchBot ecosystem. Where things are slightly unclear are the further steps. I can divide the experience of using SwitchBot Remote into two parts:
Controlling SwitchBot Ecosystem
The company made sure that the integration looks nice and it’s streamlined with their devices. Unfortunately, not everything is supported at launch, but you can bypass the limits by creating device-specific automation that can be then added to SwitchBot Remote’s menu.
At the moment the following devices are supported:
- SwitchBot Bot (review)
- SwitchBot Curtain and Curtain 3 (review)
- Blind Tilt (review)
- Colour Bulb and LED Strip Light
- SwitchBot K10+ Smart Vacuum (review)
It’s a shame to see so many unsupported devices from their ecosystem on release date. I’m sure these will be supported with the subsequent firmware updates. I hope the company expands on native ecosystem actions – for example, SwitchBot Bulb has colour presets and animations available, while the SwitchBot K10+ robot only comes with options to clean the entire house – contextual buttons could be used to clean selected areas or rooms. I will pass this feedback to SwitchBot, in the past they were very responsive to changes.
Other devices
After scratching my head, I discovered, that to add my existing remotes, I have to visit the Switchbot Hub device card instead. Since the release of SwitchBot Hubs, they offered an option to create virtual remotes by cloning the ones you have or selecting compatible devices from the product list.
If you want to clone an existing remote, use a SwitchBot Hub to create a new IR remote and add it to your ecosystem then synchronise it all with SwitchBot Universal Remote. It’s a process I had to repeat each time I added a new device or scene. It can be a little annoying, as each synchronisation takes about 2min.
Use SwitchBot Hub first
Cloning IR remotes can be a little tedious (takes about 5 min per simple remote) and can be frustrating at first. When adding a new button to your virtual device, wait until SwitchBot Hub disables status light then press the button once and wait a couple of seconds. Pressing IR buttons multiple times will record multiple signals. The app displays a confirmation of the IR signal registration with a slight delay.
When remotes are added to SwitchBot Hub, they can be synced up with SwitchBot Remote and each device can be selected using navigation buttons on the remote. It’s easy, and thanks to oversized icons and custom naming – devices are easy to navigate.
SwitchBot Remote offers 3 ways to add a new remote:
- Smart – record some buttons, try to match the control pattern
- List – find your device and model from the list of compatible devices
- Manual – painstakingly record every button of your remote by pointing it at the base of the SwitchBot Hub
Whichever options you choose, you need to go through this just once.
In action
SwitchBot Remote has a great advantage over the last universal remote I tried. Both, the controller and hubs can trigger IR signals. It means that you can control IR devices located in the same room as your remote, or in the rooms where SwitchBot Hubs are present.
Active devices offer additional quick actions available under “hidden” black buttons with contextual menus associated with them. Overflow of actions can be accessed through one of the buttons and if your remote happens to have more controls than SwitchBot Remote can offer, the virtual actions are used from the screen menu. It’s not the most efficient way, but between this and the ability to trigger all control actions via voice commands too – you can get pretty good at controlling more complex devices.
SwitchBot Universal Remote can remove the clutter of various remotes in your living room and simplify access to smart devices for guests and parents who are more familiar with remotes than smart apps. While the SwitchBot Universal Remote isn’t ideal, it’s not as expensive as competitors.
What’s missing
There are no direct options to bind and chain commands through buttons. If I want to turn on my projector and enable the sound bar I have to create the scene in the SwitchBot app and bind that to my remote instead. I could cheat the system and add a signal from the second remote to another contextual button. I tried to be clever and bind 2 remote signals to a single learn action, but that didn’t work. I’d love to see the button sequences with pauses and press durations that were possible with SofaBaton X1S.
One more thing that I’d like to see, would be a community database of devices. I found the selection of pre-defined remotes to be lacking (it’s impossible to have all devices on it) therefore having the ability to share the remotes created with other SwitchBot Universal Remote users – seems like the perfect way to go.
Shop for Switchbot
Get Switchbot devices in the following stores:
Final thoughts
SwitchBot Remote is a decent remote. These are hard to get right, as the world of infrared controls has no standards whatsoever, but SwitchBot made an appealing device to anyone who would like to introduce a degree of smart controls to more analogue devices. In short, SwitchBot Remote is the extension of the SwitchBot app and the phone – more convenient and faster than trying to use the app – but unlike SofaBaton X1S it won’t break your bank. Let me know what other smart devices would you like to see from SwitchBot in this Reddit thread.
🆓📈💵 – See the transparency note for details.
