Daily Archive: October 28, 2013

Best Quality Product I’ve Ever Owned

Contrary to another reviewer’s experience, my units do support channel selection. Each receiver and transmitter has a 4-position slide switch on the back, allowing you to configure the set (transmitter and 3 receivers) to one of four different channels. That works as expected – you can control the same receivers from several transmitters, or you can put the transmitters on different channels so the sets are disjoint.

The transmitter battery is a standard CR2032 lithium coin cell – inexpensive and widely available. It is easy to replace – the battery holder unsnaps and slides out.

One of the transmitter units didn’t work out-of-the-box. I fixed it by unscrewing the back, wiping the pushbutton contact pads with a cloth, and putting it back together. The contact pads are the same kind that are routinely used in television remote controls, so in general the reliability should be similar to TV remotes.

The transmitter has a retractable antenna – extending it gives better range.

I love how easy it is! Just bought today, but so far it works like a charm. No more crawling behind shelves or the TV to turn on and off things. It’s all the fun of a clapper without the annoyance of it randomly turning on and off. Great little gadget for twenty bucks.

I used them for ceiling mounted fluorescent fixtures that lack a switch and they came through with flying colors. The remote is well designed and built (not flimsy like 90% of the little remotes out there) and these have ground, which the competitors seem to think is too much to ask. I would buy again.

Great range and reliability. I bought my first unit to control the lights in my attic on the third floor. I found out just how good the range is when I bought a second unit for my basement office on the opposite end of the house, about 100 feet away… Initially, they were both on the same channel, and I was turning the attic lights on from my basement, three floors away! Changing the channel was quick, and solved the problem. In my experience, I’ve never once encountered any kind of interference or failure to operate, and I live in a crowded urban environment and a house full of gadgets.

Really good design. The product looks good. More importantly, it’s very well thought-out. Some features I love: hinged battery doors, plenty of room between outlets for holding “wall warts”, two convenient always-on outlets, the low-profile plug and the status lights on the remote and strip. This feels like it didn’t cut any corners.

The build quality is definitely the best of any product I’ve used. I’ve owned belkin products in the past (network switches and other gear) and never been too impressed — they were just simple budget devices and I figure I got what I paid for. This product feels like it was built a step above that.