Review on Broadlink RM4 Universal Control Compatible by Nicholas Dobson

So, I've been watching a lot of videos from most YouTubers and people explaining the features of smart homes and home appliances, and almost everyone tends to like this universal IR control to use. I decided to buy it. In the last 3 days I can see the following pros and cons: Pros: - Quite small, you can put it anywhere (if you have an outlet next to it, of course). - It was actually easy to set up. . Once the app recognized the controls, setting up my TV, AC, and ST unit was pretty quick. The default remotes that appear in the app work pretty well and with the first option it should work (except for the ST block which took me to the 3rd default option to work, but at least I didn't have to configure all the buttons individually ). They were quickly recognized by my Alexa app and initially worked well with on/off commands, TV volume, etc. Voice commands respond almost immediately. I could tell Alexa to turn off my TV and before she says ok the TV is already off. I was hoping for that). To do this I would have to create separate scenes for each channel, then sync them to Alexa and then create routines to change them with voice commands (in my case I usually only watch about 10-12 channels, but for those who watch more than that , gets pretty boring, and aside from that Alexa only allows 99 subs, so if you need that many subs, those subs will take up some space for you) - In my particular case with channels in a box, ST has HD channels from channel 1002 and up. When I added my favorite channels to the list and tried to test them with the app's remote control, it turned out that the app dials so quickly that some numbers are even repeating, and you end up with a different channel than expected. What I had to do was set up "channels" which were just each digit from 0 to 9 and I created scenes for each channel with 4 different commands (each corresponding digit) to add a little delay to the channel. Dialing a number. Took me about 20 minutes for 12 channels. A bit awkward. Sometimes your Alexa Routines work, but the remotes you're trying to control don't do what you expect them to. I wanted to be able to change TV inputs with specific triggers. At first they worked very well, but last night they didn't respond at all. I added a few Alexa confirmation phrases to verify if it was the operation itself or just actions on the IR remote and indeed the IR remote didn't perform the action. I disabled the skill, exited the app, tried to relink everything and for some reason it failed and I couldn't log in and relink my account for about 25 minutes (don't know why) until it got to work again was fixed and after that the subroutines worked perfectly. but I hope I don't have to repeat this whole process every 2-3 days. - The FAQ section is generally useless. There aren't many questions and most of the questions are related to settings (which ironically was my easiest step). In general, I wouldn't say that the thing doesn't work at all. can be integrated, but it may take some time to set it up the way you want it, as happened to me. If you just want to automate the on/off state of your devices or maybe timers, this works well for the price you pay. If you want it to do more complex things (particularly a cumbersome channel list) you might be able to save a little more and buy a more reliable one.