Review on Roku Voice Remote Pro: Rechargeable Remote With TV Controls, Lost Remote Finder, Hands-Free Voice Controls, And Shortcut Buttons For Roku Players, Roku TV & Streambars With Private Listening by Melvin Belton

Our experience with Rokus is that the streaming devices themselves work pretty much and well as advertised, but the remotes are just a nest of failures. So we got our first Roku remote Pros to begin hopefully upgrading/replacing our numerous older Roku remotes. I’d say we gained a slight bit overall, but just barely, definitely lost some too.The first thing I figured I rightly ought to do with my first new rechargeable remote Pro was charge it up - whereupon I immediately found that its little green-LED charging indicator was thoroughly misbehaved, which meant I got no clue what the battery charge level was - which is very disconcerting, especially for me whose first Roku remote 3 years ago just spontaneously died a horrible death after only 9 days, and took an enormous lot of bother then to get Roku to figure out and replace that old one - until, regardless of the battery charge, I tried pairing this new Pro remote with my Roku streaming device, whereupon the remote got automatically "updated” (i.e. its firmware, I suppose the Roku meant), which seemed to straighten out its charging function and indicator.The remote Pro weighs almost exactly the same as the older remote (both 2.8oz / 78gm, both including their respective batteries), and is about the same length and width; but the new Pro remote is 1/8” / 3mm thicker, so a slightly less comfortable, secure fit in the hand - at least for me, with only about average size hands. I suppose that increased size must be pretty much unavoidable in order to contain the new functions, ‘cause, if there’s one thing that Roku is seemingly good at, it’s making things small/compact.All our previous, non-Pro Roku remotes were able to figure out how to connect to my TVs (Sonys), for on/off and volume control, almost automatically, with no help from me except my confirming whether sound was coming through - a huge advance over miserably stupid cable TV boxes (uggh!); the Roku gear was supposedly ascertaining the TV type by itself via their HDMI connection, marvelous! However, these fancy new remote Pros bobble this, have to ask me for the brand of my TV, not a super-big deal, but a distinct loss of capability in this area, an unforced error.The mute button is new to us on these Roku remotes, and works well; and I’m glad that operating the remote’s volume control automatically unmutes - although I’m not sure if that auto-unmute is any of the remote’s doing, or all just the TV doing that.The new personal shortcut buttons sound useful, but, at least in my view, are seriously compromised by Roku’s failure - probably avoidance - of providing reasonably good, clear instructions on how they work, how to use them. It seems like it is only voice commands that can be captured as shortcuts - but Roku conspicuously never really says for sure. And there’s nowhere that I can find any clarity from Roku about what-all is allowed/supported as voice commands either, just a few various examples that supposedly do work. It also seems that these captured/stored voice commands take so long to process every time you use a shortcut button that - although they typically do save you button presses - they still take longer than if you just went ahead and pressed all the buttons, didn’t use the shortcuts. Hey Roku, tell us how your equipment really works! Hey Roku, don’t leave us to guess!A full, 100% battery charge on this remote takes like maybe 8 hours or more, bothersomely long; whereas decent charging circuitry in the remote would get the job done in a couple hours. (I believe that those folks saying here that it takes much less than 8 hours are either not really paying good attention to what’s happening, or - particularly in Roku’s own statements on this point - just lying.)On our previous, non-Pro remotes, we were using removable, rechargeable NiMH batteries because those remotes were such notorious battery hogs; and those NiMHs typically lasted a little under 2 months in use per charge with medium-heavy usage. These Pro remotes, with their built-in rechargeable lithium batteries, run for around 3 months per charge with the same medium-heavy usage, a pretty good improvement. And the Pro remote is easier to charge, just plug it in. But the Pro remote is out-of-service for hours while it charges, while the non-Pro is out-of-service for only the minute that it takes to swap-in fresh batteries. So the built-in, rechargeable battery in the Pro remote is probably a net improvement, but mixed.Of these, our first two Pro remotes, one only lasted 5 weeks before its battery/charging circuitry suddenly went crazy and sucked the battery down from over 80% down to near zero in under a minute, obviously got very hot in the process - a literally potentially lethal defect. And, as I mentioned briefly above, I already had one incredibly ugly previous experience with Roku, getting them to replace an early-failed remote. So this time I took the problem to Best Buy instead, even though I was a few days past their return window, and they very nicely, very quickly, completely took care of the problem, got me a replacement. But still now I/we know that these Pro remotes have this literally potentially lethal defect.These Pro remotes have a find-lost-remote feature that is one of its key attractions, causes the lost remote to emit a locater sound, worked well upon initial test, but, the first time we had occasion to actually need it, turned out the feature had already totally failed, seemingly the remote lost its voice. In the case of a find-lost-remote feature, it is emphatically not better to have loved and lost.In conclusion, I would still say that this Remote Pro is a slight net gain over the previous, non-"Pro” model, but only just barely. In rating it, I am deducting half a star for its initially messed-up charging function/indicator, another half star for its diminished auto-TV-identification capability, certainly a full star for its crazy dangerous battery blow-out, and a star for its failed find-remote feature. So 2 stars. Hey Roku, do better!