Review: Peel Smart Remote
- Company: Peel
- Product: Smart Remote
- Price: $99
- Website: http://www.peel.com
Description:
Peel is a popular free app that lets you discover and locate TV you'll love by learning the shows you already watch and like. Add Peel universal control for remote control of your whole entertainment system, allowing you to watch with a single tap and control volume, channel, source and more with simple gestures—all right from your iPhone or iPod touch.
- Guide learns what shows you like and suggests new ones
- One tap controls your entire home entertainment system
- Simple gestures control volume, channel, DVR, and more
- Unobtrusive wireless Peel fruit controls your system
- Quick setup with a simple and intuitive interview
Overview:
If devices are growing everywhere in your home like mine, there is a need for a way to control them all. Peel's answer for this is there Smart Remote that can control your entire entertainment system
Unboxing:
The cylinder packaging is put to gather very nicely. Including in the package was the Peel, Wifi/AC cable, C battery and manuel. This product is very oddly shaped peel compares to a fruit "Pear"
Initial thoughts:
I was very excited about this product as I have over 6 iOS devices in my home. I thought I would greatly benefit from this product. Setup went very smoothly. The first thing I realized was the peel does not use your wifi it has it own built right into the AC cable. Basically you plug the cable in to the AC outlet then pair the pear using a code on a sticker inside the peel. The pear itself has an arrows on the bottom that illustrates the direction it needs to be facing. Once that is done you run through the menu's setting up your device. This seemed simple enough but I think it takes longer then it needs to. Basically it would ask you what model TV you have then give you a long list of inputs. Way more then my tv has and you basically start clicking through them until one works. It would of been nicer if they did a bit more work and add the models as well in order to narrow down the testing list. If for some reason like me none of them work you will get an option to contact tech support either by email or phone number. I ended up using this because my PS3 dongle was not recognized. Tech support was located in Califonia and was very helpful. They said they would have add a code for my dongle with in 24hours.
Review: After 1 week of use.
Ok let me start by saying after talking to a Peel customer support they corrected me and they are working on changing there marketing a bit as well. The peal is NOT a universal remote it's a SMART REMOTE. So basically I would say it is more of an intelligent guide thats able to control your devices. Now after understanding this I felt a bit miss guided and felt the remote did not live up to want I wanted. However I did put my Harmoney One remote away for a week and tried to make due with the peel. That being said the peel started to grow on me the ability to see whats on at the given time and click on the album art and jump to the station was very nice. However I did find my self looking for my harmony remote.
Final Thoughts:
Customer Support was very good. The device is just as snappy as any IR remote which was suppressing seeing its using wifi. The intelligent guide is very neat this is there main selling point and works well. With all this being said for me there are more short comings then positives for me
- No native iPad support
- No syncing of device setups - This is very concerning if you have multiple iOS devices like me having to set them up on 6 devices is not a good experience.
- Fav/Cut Syncing: To my understanding these are supposed to sync across your account however only the Cut shows synced for me.
- Device support is limited.
- Customization is limmited: Things like you can not rename a device.(example. I am using device Roku if I want to set everything up for my Wii)
- No Activities: You can not create you own macro like activities like you can on a harmony remote. Something as simple as turn everything off you have to power each device off induvidualy.
At this point I would only recommend this device to some one who want a cool guide however doesn't most cable companies have an app for that already and as a bonus you can schedule shows to record on your dvr.
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