JustBoom Smart Remote review

There were always jokes about the Wii Remote looking like a TV remote control, and it looks as if the JustBoom team has taken these jokes as inspiration for a slightly different kind of media remote. While looking simplistic, with only a few buttons, the Smart Remote’s secret is that it contains a six-axis gyroscope that allows for a degree of motion control.

The full article can be found in The MagPi 57 and was written by Rob Zwetsloot.

Luckily, this feature isn’t on all the time. It is activated and deactivated by pressing the button in the middle of the volume control strip, and emulates a mouse pointer moving around the screen as the user dictates, by flicking and tilting the remote.

It works pretty well, making an instant transition between modes, and can easily be recentred by turning the motion controls off and on again. We found on Kodi that it tracked across the screen fairly slowly, forcing you to bend your wrist to extreme angles to get to the corners. On Windows PCs, and indeed on the Raspberry Pi, it required less work to move around the screen.

As for being a pure media remote, it does the job well. JustBoom claims that it’s designed to have the bare minimum of useful buttons for media viewing, and for Kodi this works well. The thing we missed most was a Play/Pause button, but you can definitely get used to tapping OK twice to pause, so it’s quite a minor complaint.

The build quality is pretty decent as well, with the buttons making satisfying clicks as you push them. They’re also nice and large, so you’re unlikely to push the wrong one.

As mentioned earlier, they do work on the Raspberry Pi desktop, which is pretty neat. The OK button works as a normal mouse click, and Back and Home work on a browser. It could well be useful in a classroom environment, as well as in the home, for media viewing.

Last word

4/5

It’s a decent bit of kit with a unique feature. We’d like a Play/Pause button, but otherwise it’s perfectly serviceable.