Remotes : Best and Worst Of.

[warweary]

Remotes, the best, the worst and those in between.  Post em up peeps.

 

In some cases I don't even touch my unit and instead it's all about controlling with the remote.  I present to you for consideration - the Nad D7050 remote as the worst remote ever.  I mean just look at it, tiny, small, plastic, sure those attributes aren't so bad, but I am reminded hilariously of Douglas Adams,

"Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it."

 

Yep, the nad d7050 remote is black, with black buttons, black symbols, and not a single raised button to find in the dark, instead a nearly smooth, yet somewhat sticky surface.  The only easily visible thing on the remote is of course the Nad logo!  Fortunately the nad ipad app works quite well.

 

I'm pretty sure none of my current remotes comes near the top of the pile, as remotes go, so please somebody else post up a decent remote!

 

In infamous SNA tradition, feet shots included will be appreciated, but are not required!

[Ralph]

For sheer build quality I nominate this Conrad Johnson remote.

 

 

It's machined from a single piece of aluminium, and immaculately finished.

The battery compartment is accessed by unscrewing an aluminium  panel - no sliding or clicking there.

Pity it only operates my pre-amp.

 

[wen]

I'll nominate my Creek SRC2 remote, easy to use , well labled with nice feel when pushing raised bottons, also works for Creek Destiny Amp, CD player, as well as my Musical Fidelity Xray V3 CD player, and my Marantz CD 52 MKII SE player

[KRSDarwin]

The good, the bad and the ugly.

 

The PSAudio Perfectwave DirectStream DAC remote is good - in build quality, in feel (nice weight), in looks and in performance (in penetrating the perforated screen of our hi-fi cabinet). It befits the quality DAC it serves. 

 

The Musical Fidelity M6si remote is bad - in build quality (light plastic), in feel (cheap) and in performance (doesn’t penetrate our perforated screen, battery cover broken and is taped). It does not befit the quality integrated amp it serves.

 

The Denon 4520 AVR remote is ugly - it is boxy, ugly, too much going on and is not nice to handle. Saving grace, we don’t use it much. 

Edited June 27, 2021 by KRSDarwin

[Janjuggler]

Hi All,

 

My 'Magic Remote' that came with my LG television controls everything connected to the TV, the Integra Preamp, the Panasonic 4K Blueray, and for everyday TV listening the Q Acoustic powered speakers.

 

[Bunno77]

Great idea for a thread. 

 

Remotes are a real pet peeve of mine especially with expensive gear that comes with a remote worse than what comes with a $20 no name DVD player. 

 

Some good ones.... 

 

New Cambridge Evo remote is fantastic. 

 

Plinius remote is so solid it could be used for self defense

Linn. It is brilliant 

 

McIntosh. Works with many new and old models

 

 

And couldn't live without my logitech with hub

 

Just a small sample of the bad. As above the Musical Fidelity are horrible. 

 

Parasound

 

Moon

 

 

Will post some more soon. 

[Stereophilus]

My biggest beef with remotes is button redundancy.  Give me something simple and elegant any day.

[progladyte]

My pet hate remote is this damned thing from Yamaha.

 

It has 81 buttons FFS .............

 

After spending 7 years on a science and advanced technology degree, mastering in physics, nuclear fission, robotics and automation, it still took me another 6 months to learn how to turn this bastard on......

 

This Yammy model is so sophisticated it will even send you a neural reminder to change your undies and even refresh your underarm deodorant if you haven't done so after 5 days. (only available in the deluxe model mind you)

 

 

The other one is so damned light weight and puny that it easily slips out of your hand. It was a cheap Laser model of DVD player I bought recently to work with a HDMI connection as my previous player didn't have one, being about 176 years old.

 

The other main issue I have with ANY remote is that the text on the face of the remote is often too small to be legible without hiring one of the Hubble telescopes.

 

 

 

 

Give me a simple on / off button, source select and a volume control and I'll be fine thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 21, 2021 by progladyte

[warweary]

It's friggin hilarious to put 80+ buttons on a remote. I recall a sony avr I had in the 90's that had around about 90 buttons or so and ability to learn more functions for some of those buttons.

 

 

[surprisetech]

I will preface by saying that a lot of my remotes remain in a drawer largely unused because a Harmony One rules in the loungeroom, a Harmony 1100 in the bungalow and a Harmony 525 in the caravan.

Half a dozen product remotes do still get used regularly in these & other systems.

 

I'll start with the most disappointing.

First prize for form over function in my collection goes to the Cambridge Audio 751BD remote.

Looks nice, BUT; except for the nav keys, all the buttons are the same shape & size & are in just 2 large groups.  It has small labelling, no backlighting and is too long. The only buttons that stand out are the Red/Green/Blue/Yellow set that I rarely need to use.

 

Another disappointing one is the remote for the Rotel RA-1570.

Once again, the remote is too long and while the button groupings are a little better than the CA remote, the layout is still terrible.

Surely, the most used buttons on an integrated amp remote would be the volume control and source selection.

So why would you have the volume control on two tiny buttons at the very top of the remote and the source selection buttons right down the bottom?  While a bunch of buttons that almost never get used occupy the central area.

 

In both of these cases I am more than happy with the equipment they these remotes were included with, but I expected much better ergonomics from established manufacturers and at this price point.

Edited June 21, 2021 by surprisetech

[Bunno77]

23 minutes ago, surprisetech said:

I will preface by saying that a lot of my remotes remain in a drawer largely unused because a Harmony One rules in the loungeroom, a Harmony 1100 in the bungalow and a Harmony 525 in the caravan.

Half a dozen product remotes do still get used regularly in these & other systems.

 

I'll start with the most disappointing.

First prize for form over function in my collection goes to the Cambridge Audio 751BD remote.

Looks nice, BUT; except for the nav keys, all the buttons are the same shape & size & are in just 2 large groups.  It has small labelling, no backlighting and is too long. The only buttons that stand out are the Red/Green/Blue/Yellow set that I rarely need to use.

 

Another disappointing one is the remote for the Rotel RA-1570.

Once again, the remote is too long and while the button groupings are a little better than the CA remote, the layout is still terrible.

Surely, the most used buttons on an integrated amp remote would be the volume control and source selection.

So why would you have the volume control on two tiny buttons at the very top of the remote and the source selection buttons right down the bottom?  While a bunch of buttons that almost never get used occupy the central area.

 

In both of these cases I am more than happy with the equipment they these remotes were included with, but I expected much better ergonomics from established manufacturers and at this price point.

I'd forgotten about the Rotel. Awful too 

[surprisetech]

5 hours ago, Bunno77 said:

New Cambridge Evo remote is fantastic. 

 

 

Good to see Cambridge Audio have had a re-think on their remotes.

[Esoterica]

Here's a few of mine.

 

The Pathos has gone to a new home. It was one of my favourites. No good if you couldn't remember what the buttons were for, as there are no labels, but with only 6 buttons, it should be easy. Made from solid, textured aluminium with a stainless steel battery cover.

 

Possibly my best current remote, is for my Emotiva CD player. It's made from solid steel with an aluminium (I think) battery cover, that I just discovered is held on with magnets. It is solid and has some weight to it. Buttons have a pretty good feel and it's fairly intuitive.

 

Close behind is the Panasonic UB-900 remote control. It's plastic but higher quality than most, with a nice, gloss faux-wood look, which is difficult to see in this pic, that I nicked off the web. It has a backlight button which is very nice to have. A must really on remotes with many specific feature buttons. Buttons have an excellent feel.

 

 

Remote for my Onkyo avr is good. Compact with everything you need and quality buttons. I memorized the layout quickly which is always convenient.

 

 

One of, if not my worst is the apple tv 4k remote. It's too small, making it difficult to use unless you have baby hands. Easy to lose down the side of couch too. I can operate most of my remotes by feel, but often press the siri button by mistake, instead of menu/back. The touchpad is prone to error also. It is (like all) apple gear well made, and simple, but it shouldn't require training to know how to use it. No surprise they've radically changed the remote on the latest apple tv generation.

 

I'll give a shout out to the remote for the Epson TW9400 too. It's only real negative is being big and bulky. Besides that, it has transparent buttons which can be light up in a pleasant dim orange, for use in a very dark room, and they have a good feel. Having a dedicated picture mode button is good when switching between different content.

[surprisetech]

Some of my favourites:

 

Marantz RC-583 Universal Learning Remote.

Looks a bit clunky by todays standards, but at the time it was pretty impressive.

Buttons are sensibly grouped, are different sizes & shapes & pretty well labelled.  For each device, five multi-purpose buttons can be assigned to functions not covered by the standard keys. 

We used it for about a dozen years in the main system, but retired it from there when we updated from HiFi VCR & Pro-Logic Surround to DVD & DD/dts.

It was then used for quite a while with a Marantz SR-50 & various CD players in the bungalow.  Still works, but not in use at present!

 

Logitech Harmony 785.

I tried a Sunwave Touchscreen remote for a year or two.  Like the Marantz, it was pretty good for its time, but no-one else would use it. 

So ultimately, this Harmony replaced the Marantz RC-583 and was in use for about 10 years with a range of different equipment.

Good layout & easy to use.  Standard rectangular shape, but the way the rear of the housing was molded made it really comfortable to hold.

Rechargeable Li-Ion battery and charging cradle were very convenient.

Only criticism is that it would have been nice if the Play, Pause, Stop & Record buttons were larger/more prominent.

 

TiVo HD Remote.

Robust, very comfortable & well laid-out.

A great remote befitting the great product it came with.

What a shame that the business model of the crowd that took on its distribution & support here in Oz, did not really tap into its potential.

 

Logitech Harmony One.

All the good stuff of the 785, but the new shape, button layouts and touchscreen make it even nicer to hold and operate.

Has now been our main system remote for over 4 years.

 

Fetch Mighty

Deserves a mention.  Good layout & ergonomics.  Not sure about quality as we had to buy a replacement after only 2 years.

A nifty feature is the "123..." button which lights up the 3 x 4 button array at the top of the remote to provide some additional TV controls and a numeric keypad.

 

Marantz RC033SR (for Marantz NR-1508)

The only AVR Remote that I've really liked. Although not used much because it's in the system where the Harmony One resides. 

Sensible number of buttons with clear labelling.  Sizes, shapes, groupings and layout all quite well done.

Previous AVR was a Yamaha RX-V667 which had less features, but twice as many buttons on the remote!

[metal beat]

On 20/06/2021 at 5:45 PM, Ralph said:

For sheer build quality I nominate this Conrad Johnson remote.

 

 

It's machined from a single piece of aluminium, and immaculately finished.

The battery compartment is accessed by unscrewing an aluminium  panel - no sliding or clicking there.

Pity it only operates my pre-amp.

 

 

Totally agree.  I have used this for probably 20 years with various cj preamps.  It also doubles as a superb fake microphone when getting into your fav music. 

 

  This is my new one and its excellent.  Another full metal jacket remote, but its too big to hold off the table 

 

 

[jt301]

While there’s plenty of different opinions on the sound quality of the devialet amps, there remotes are special. Quite rare to have a great volume knob on a remote. A pain to keep free of finger prints though.

[Bass13]

This is my favorite, Acoustic Arts.... beautiful quality remote, with the only two buttons your ever need imo.

 

 

[Marc]

 

Solid as a rock, heavy in the hand. One of my faves.

[muzzagruzz]

My Gryphon Diablo 120 remote. Superb. Also purchased separately the remote that comes with the Gryphon Ethos CD player because the one that came with my Scorpio S is a pretty miserable plastic thing. 

[warweary]

Now thats a decent remote. Looks solid, is simple, includes volume control and input select.  About all one really needs.

[muzzagruzz]

1 hour ago, warweary said:

Now thats a decent remote. Looks solid, is simple, includes volume control and input select.  About all one really needs.

Exactly

[RankStranger]

On 23/06/2021 at 8:56 PM, Bass13 said:

This is my favorite, Acoustic Arts.... beautiful quality remote, with the only two buttons your ever need imo.

 

 

too cluttered. You obviously only need the one on the right.

[April Snow]

My two fav remotes -

the PS Audio Stellar Strata & the Samsung Smart TV remote -

both small, compact and less fuss.

 

[TheBlackDisc]

I know some of their remotes are garbage, but they made some great ones too (solid billet of aluminium).

[Guest thethrowback]

In the worst category, I would nominate the Panasonic Blu-ray Disc Player touchpad remote control.

 

In some advertising material it was described as "funky" which is similar to how I describe it, except I swap the 'n' for a 'c' and the 'y' for 'ing', and append the words 'useless piece of junk'.

 

In the best category, I would nominate any remote made by Luxman. They are a quality build and heavy enough to double as a paper weight.

 

Edited June 26, 2021 by thethrowback