Neeo - Smart Home Remote & Hub Review
"The Neeo is smarter than your average universal remote, but understanding it requires homework."
Pros
- Great-looking design and materials
- Long listing of compatible smart domicile devices
Cons
- Wouldn't work with our Roku
- Only partial support for Philips Hue lightbulbs
- Buggy
We've long bemoaned how a lot of smart-home devices are ugly. That's why it was nice to go our easily on the Neeo smart remote. Information technology's a genuinely good-looking piece of tech, as are its many accessories.
The Neeo showed upwards on our radar as a Kickstarter project more than iii years agone. Information technology definitely didn't meet its intended shipping goal (March 2015 for early-bird backers), but information technology's finally bachelor. Here'south how information technology stacks up when information technology comes to expectation versus reality.
How it looks
The Neeo and its "Brain" (hub) are pretty. Non much seems to accept inverse here betwixt the initial video and the actual production. The remote is just over vii inches long and nearly two inches wide. It'due south fairly sparse at 0.36 inches. The three-inch LED touchscreen has a 480-by-800-pixel resolution and is supposed to be fingerprint-resistant. However, if your Neeo is found at a offense scene, they'd probably be able to CSI it pretty well.
The circular hub is 4.one inches in diameter and just under an inch alpine, so it should have no problem resting nether a lot of TVs. It has a small white LED that glows constantly unless it's in pairing manner. On top, there's a pairing button. Both the Encephalon and the remote share a black-and-silver combo. The black cords, including the one for the IR extender bundled with it, are wrapped in nylon. The terminal accessory is the remote's charter, which is a disc just a fiddling wider than the remote itself. It has a small footprint, but it's surprisingly heavy. The screen's background is an out-of-focus swirl of pinks, yellows, and blues.
Expectation versus reality: What it controls
Out of the box, the Neeo was supposed to come with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thread, ZigBee, and Z-Wave compatibility. Neeo claimed it would work with more than 30,000 devices, including Sonos speakers, Apple Boob tube, Roku, and Philips Hue lightbulbs. With its infrared applied science, it boasted control of 55,000 TVs and 19,000 DVD players, every bit well equally cable and satellite boxes. We have a Roku 3600x streaming stick, which the app said Neeo supports. Nosotros went through all the steps and couldn't go the Neeo to actually communicate with information technology. The interface showed upwards on the remote, but information technology wouldn't actually navigate through the menu.
In one case you make a change in the app, the remote volition auto-update.
Upon delivery, information technology seems like the Neeo hits nearly of those promised targets — though its Thread and ZigBee capabilities don't seem to be active yet. Yous can use the remote to command speakers such as the Sonos One and Sonos Play:5. It works with some Honeywell thermostats, but Nest and Ecobee don't seem to be on the list yet. Nosotros got our Lifx and Philips Hue lightbulbs working, but we were out of luck for our Nanoleaf Aurora panels. We found our DirecTV box with no trouble, but our Boob tube is evidently too dumb for Neeo (and every remote in beingness).
The Neeo has a workaround for not-continued devices, just because we lost the original remote to the Tv set, nosotros couldn't successfully complete the setup. The remote thinks information technology's turning the TV on, but information technology doesn't.
Expectation versus reality: Seamless integration
Much like its most direct competitor, the Logitech Harmony Elite remote, the Neeo is supposed to give you lot a single controller for your entire smart habitation. In addition to merely beingness able to use a remote to plow off your lights, these devices' hubs mean you should exist able to set up scenes and If This Then That-fashion recipes that trigger automatically in certain scenarios. For example, if you host movie night every Fri and want your TV to come on, your Apple tree TV to start Netflix, and your smart light bulbs to dim, yous should be able to prepare this up in one case and have it reliably activate once a week at 8 p.g.
There are ways to gear up routines in the Neeo app. Yep, the app. From the initial setup, to adding devices, to creating these rules, the heavy lifting happens in the Neeo app. As for the recipes, setup is pretty standard — you can fix schedules, apply conditions (only if the motion sensor is activated or kitchen light is on), and receive email alerts (if something triggers the sensor between 9 a.k. and 5 p.m., for case). The skillful news is that once you do something on the app, the remote will car-update when you pick information technology upwardly to use it.
But these recipes are just as skilful every bit the ingredients. You wouldn't be able to set your Nest thermostat as part of a "practiced night" scenario, because it'due south not supported. Even devices that do work with Neeo don't necessarily have full back up. You can't change the colour of Hue or Lifx bulbs from either the app or the remote at the moment. Neeo isn't the first to accept this problem; it took Amazon a very long time to get Alexa the ability to change these bulbs from white to blueish or royal. Only this is a problem Neeo's been working on for at least five months.
Speaking of Alexa, Amazon Echo and Google Domicile compatibility are all the same MIA at the moment.
Expectation versus reality: It'due south a remote
Setting aside its smart-home control, the Neeo is starting time and foremost a Boob tube remote. It has buttons in addition to its touchscreen, including OK, back, menu, volume, channel, mute, habitation, and ability. We lost the original remote to our garbage Tv set awhile back, and none of the three replacements we've bought from various websites have worked. So nosotros weren't surprised when the Neeo didn't either. But it did exercise just fine with the DirecTV, particularly when it comes to those buttons. In that location does feel like there's a chip of a lag when scrolling through the channel menu, only it'southward pretty negligible.
It'due south corking that the team seems responsive to issues, merely we wish in that location were fewer issues to begin with.
Sadly, one of our favorite features is hitting or miss. Via the app, yous can add a bunch of your favorite channels to the cablevision or satellite box screen. You'll have to have your provider's aqueduct list handy, as information technology doesn't automatically fill it in for you. Once you've washed so, you can navigate to the screen (information technology takes u.s. two taps, one for the room icon and some other for the DirecTV button) and be greeted with logos for Investigation Discovery, USA, Oxygen, or wherever else you spotter criminal offense shows. Pressing the button ideally switches stations for you — except when it doesn't. For example, Comedy Cardinal's number is 249 on DirecTV, just the Neeo never took us to the aqueduct. It would requite upwards afterward inputting ii digits and say the channel — 24 or 29 — didn't exist. Information technology reliably surfed over to Bravo, though, then Neeo conspicuously loves The Real Housewives.
Information technology seems other users had the same issue with Samsung and other TVs, and after posting on the community page, the Neeo team (which seems pretty responsive) stock-still the issue. That's a fleck of an onus to put on the boilerplate person who only wants to lookout cowboy robots in an amusement park where zilch "could possibli go wrong".
Expectation versus reality: Absurd features
To go noticed on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, products usually have to offering a piddling something extra to ready them apart from the competition. In addition to its sleek design, Neeo promised some unique and useful features. Unfortunately, they're not ready at the moment. The "handprint recognition" was supposed to let you ready profiles, and then the remote would automatically recognize who was holding it. So you could restrict each person's admission, so your tween couldn't watch HBO. While the sensors are in that location, it's still under development.
The same goes for the SOS alarm, which was supposed to make the remote beep until you lot found it under the dog bed. Some Rokus take this, and it should just exist true of every remote always. That feature's ETA is also TBD. Finally, the battery life was listed as lasting "months" on the Kickstarter page. That may be true – if you never touch it. Nosotros used the remote off and on for about six hours of testing one day, and the battery went from 100 percentage to 88 pct. And then we left it alone overnight, and came back to information technology at 88 percentage. We've seen some comments in the Neeo customs page that battery life has improved with some updates.
The odd thing is that Neeo withal touts these features on its product page, without warning that they're still in evolution. We had to actually dig to ostend some of these features aren't yet set up to go.
Warranty
Neeo offers a two-year warranty on its remote.
Our Take
The $369 Neeo is beautiful, but its brains don't match. Though it's been a three-yr-long expect for Kickstarter backers, nearly have just had theirs for a few months now. Hopefully Neeo tin can deliver some updates to make the remote more universally appealing.
What are the alternatives?
While there are lots of universal remotes, there aren't many that also practise smart-abode control. The $350 Logitech Harmony Elite does. Its blueprint probably won't turn your caput, but it does work with a off-white amount of devices, including Nest thermostats, Lutron Caséta switches, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home.
Will it concluding?
The 2-twelvemonth warranty is nice, though the large glass screen does brand the states worry. With any oversupply-funded smart-home project, it'south ever a worry that the company could go under and brick your device.
Should you buy it?
If you don't listen hunting downwards answers to your questions or problems via customs sites or blog posts, and so you might think some of Neeo'due south headaches are quirks rather than deal breakers. If yous take cypher patience for trying to set up something upwardly more than than once, there are probably too many kinks for y'all to carp with.
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Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/smart-home-reviews/neeo-smart-remote-review/