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Choosing the right TV, audio gear, and media streamer solves most of your home theater system problems, but creates a big one: multiple remotes.
Turning each component on, and making sure it’s set up properly can eat into your movie, TV, or music enjoyment time, and fumbling around for the right remote in the dark is annoying. The quick fix is to get a universal remote.
A universal remote looks like a regular TV remote, and has all the same basic functions: volume control, channel select, input cycling, and DVR recording, but has one additional feature: it can be programmed to control all the difference pieces of your home theater system, and switch between them at the push of a button.
To sync your remote to a device, you’ll need to find the correct code (you can find this by searching for the type of TV you have with the term “universal remote code” after it); once entered, the remote will be paired with that device.
Before moving on to the next gadget, be sure to press one of the “component” buttons, which are sometimes labeled (TV, DVD, Aux, etc) and sometimes colored (Red, Green, Blue, Yellow). Pushing the different component buttons allows your universal remote to control that particular piece of equipment. Once you’ve synced your remote up to all of the components in your stereo system, you’re done.
We’ve found the best universal remote controls, and gathered them in this guide to save you time. If you’re tired of having a cluttered coffee table full of similar looking remote controls, we’ve got you covered.
What You Need to Know Before Buying a Universal Remote
There are many factors to consider when choosing the right universal remote for you; below are the most important ones, which we considered while we were researching this list.
Compatibility: Universal remotes are designed to work with many types of devices, but no one remote is compatible with every electronic from every company. We’ve made sure the remotes in our guide work with as many as possible, but we recommend doing a quick search to make sure your specific gear will work.
Number Of Devices: All of the remotes in our guide can be used to control at least four different devices, but some can control many more.
Smart Features: Universal remotes have become advanced over the past few years, so we’ve recommended some that have cool extras, like an automatically updating database of devices, and touch screen. Keep in mind that adding extras to a remote also makes it more complicated to use.
