Amazon Alexa Voice Remote Pro Review: Lost & Found

Worth When Reviewed

$34.99

Finest Costs At the moment: Amazon Alexa Voice Distant Professional

$34.99

$39.99

Amazon’s Hearth TV remotes have steadily improved through the years, with further buttons added for controlling TV quantity and shortcuts to open fashionable apps.

The Voice Distant Professional is the corporate’s flagship distant with unique options together with backlit keys, a ringer so you possibly can observe it down when it’s misplaced between the couch cushions and a pair of customisable buttons which you can program to do quite a lot of issues.

Within the UK, it isn’t bundled with any of Amazon’s Hearth TV units – even its precise TVs. This implies it’s an adjunct – an choice for anybody eager to improve their normal distant to get the Professional’s options.

Within the US, you should buy it as a part of a bundle with a Hearth TV Stick 4K or Hearth TV Dice. Oddly, although, it’s equipped as a second distant with a Hearth TV Stick 4K and it’s no cheaper (or wasn’t on the time of evaluate) than shopping for the 2 merchandise individually.

Options & design

• Backlit keys
• Discover my distant
• Customisable buttons

At a look, there isn’t a lot to differentiate the Voice Distant Professional from the three^rd-gen Voice Distant. The design could be very related, as are its dimensions and weight.

Look nearer, although, and also you’ll spot a number of new buttons. Prime proper is a headphone button. This brings up the Bluetooth units panel in your Hearth TV, making it quick to hook up with paired Bluetooth headphones – or audio system – and to pair some new headphones.

Jim Martin / Foundry

It’s a good suggestion, too, as these settings are buried pretty deep within the Hearth TV’s menus and utilizing Bluetooth headphones means you’re not disturbing others whilst you watch. Conversely, utilizing a Bluetooth speaker is an efficient various to purchasing a sound bar, enhancing upon your TV’s audio system and probably making higher use of a tool you have already got.

There’s additionally a mixed up/down button which matches with the TV button. It’s for altering channel when watching stay TV in your Hearth TV, however like earlier Alexa Voice Remotes, may work with appropriate TVs to vary channel.

The truth is, numerous the buttons together with quantity and path pad work with appropriate units. This implies you need to use the Voice Distant Professional to exchange your TV or soundbar distant for the commonest capabilities.

Like every common distant, there’ll at all times be device-specific buttons that you just may miss, however when watching reveals on the Hearth TV particularly, with the ability to modify quantity with out choosing up a second distant is handy.

What’s lacking, and which makes the Voice Distant Professional much less appropriate as a TV distant substitute is the absence of the 4 colored buttons – crimson, blue, inexperienced and yellow. And, after all, a quantity pad for coming into channel numbers. The remotes that include Amazon’s Hearth TVs have these further buttons, so the Voice Distant Professional might be thought-about a downgrade from these.

Jim Martin / Foundry

The Voice Distant Professional has two large attracts: backlit keys to be used in a darkish room and a ringer which sounds if you ask Alexa to search out your misplaced distant.

The dangerous information is that though it’s easy to say, “Alexa, discover my distant”, you want a second system for that. An Amazon Echo will do, however you need to use the Alexa app in your cellphone or the Hearth TV app in the event you don’t have an Echo or one other system with Alexa inbuilt.

It really works properly, with the ringer sounding virtually instantly after you ask Alexa. You’ll want to press one of many distant’s buttons to silence the beeping, that means it’s a must to observe it down and retrieve it first. (It didn’t work for me, however that’s as a result of I already had two remotes arrange with Alexa utilizing Tile Stickers. I had to enter the Alexa app, discover the Voice Distant Professional, rename it from “First Distant Management” to “Hearth TV distant” after which say, “Alexa, discover Hearth TV distant”.)

Roku’s Voice Distant Professional (which isn’t appropriate with Hearth TV units) does discovering higher. It makes use of its built-in microphone to hear out for “Hey Roku, discover my distant”.

Amazon doesn’t do that, maybe as a result of the distant is powered by the same old pair of AA batteries reasonably than a chargeable battery constructed into the distant, as is the case with Roku’s model.

Customisable buttons

One other further characteristic you get with the Alexa Voice Distant Professional is customisable buttons. Marked 1 and a couple of, you possibly can set these to do quite a lot of various things.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Most individuals will most likely select to have them launch apps. There are already 4 buttons for Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Amazon Music (the latter being Hulu within the US) which aren’t customisable.

For those who needed to launch BBC iPlayer, Discovery+ or every other streaming service on a traditional Alexa Voice distant, you’d must press and maintain the Alexa button and say “Alexa, open iPlayer”.

However with the Voice Distant Professional, you possibly can set one of many two buttons to do this. It’s easy to do: simply launch the app you wish to assign then press and maintain both 1 or 2. The app shall be displayed within the checklist of choices, so it’s only a case of choosing that.

Alternatively, you possibly can select different shortcuts such because the Information, Watchlist, Notifications, My Stuff and Profiles.

The ultimate choice is to set the button to launch an Alexa command. You press and maintain the Alexa button, say your command and wait till it completes. Then you definately press and maintain the shortcut button and choose that current command from the checklist. Subsequently if you press the button, that command shall be issued.

You would, subsequently, use it to run an Alexa routine that units up your room for watching a film: dimming your good lights and decreasing a sensible blind. Or, you could possibly make it run your ‘Good night time’ routine which may flip off all of the lights, besides your bed room lamp, which is turned on.

Worth & availability

The Alexa Voice Distant Professional prices $34.99 / £34.99 from Amazon. That $5 / £5 greater than the three^rd-gen Voice Distant – absolutely cash properly spent – however each remotes are costlier than you’d anticipate.

Roku’s Voice Distant Professional (once more, not appropriate with any Hearth TV system) is cheaper at $29 from Amazon which means that Amazon might promote them cheaper if it needed to.

Additionally, it’s unimaginable to disregard which you can purchase a Hearth TV Stick for $39.99 (£44.99 within the UK) which comes with the Third-gen Voice Distant. It’s laborious to consider that the streaming stick itself accounts for under $10 of the whole value.

The truth is, there are many reasonably priced streaming sticks and bins which you can purchase – in case your motive for studying it is because you merely want a brand new distant to your Hearth TV Stick.

Verdict

In case your previous Hearth TV distant has stopped working, was eaten by the canine or completely misplaced, the Alexa Voice Distant Professional is an efficient selection for a substitute.

It’s a disgrace that it doesn’t have a chargeable battery, however so long as you have already got an Echo in the home and don’t have to purchase one simply to make use of the ‘discover my distant’ characteristic, it’s definitely helpful to have the ability to ask Alexa to search out it if you – inevitably – lose it.

But when the distant that got here along with your Hearth TV continues to be very a lot current and dealing, it merely isn’t value spending a lot simply to get the additional options that the Professional has.