Nyko Intelligent Remote 360 Review

The Xbox 360 Nyko Intelligent Remote is a cheap and neat little remote that works with both your TV and Xbox 360. It has all the buttons necessary to navigate around Xbox 360's menus and the basics of controlling any television. It is a simple two in one remote for those that find themselves often watching movies on the 360 and watching T.V.

The top half of the remote is dedicated to controlling the Xbox 360. This part includes the colorful Y, X, A, and B buttons, navigational buttons, and DVD playing buttons. You can turn on the Xbox 360 with a button that works just like the guide button on the Xbox 360 controller. There is also a button that allows you to open and close the DVD drive. Out of the box, all these buttons work perfectly with the Xbox 360 and requires no setup. This remote has everything you need to control your Xbox 360.

The bottom half of the remote is for your television. Setting up these buttons is very time consuming and can be very frustrating. Each of the 23 buttons on the bottom half must be programmed using your normal T.V. remote. So if you have lost your T.V. remote...well then you are simply out of luck! You have to go through a process for the remote to learn each button. It involves telling the "Intelligent" remote that you want to program a button and then using another remote you send the correct infrared signal to the "Intelligent" remote and it learns how to send this signal itself. If you don't do the process exactly right or the other remote is not close enough, then you have to repeat the entire process. So programming each of the 23 keys can take about a half an hour! On top of that, if your T.V. remote has a number of other special buttons you will only be able to program very few of them.

The way that you program the bottom half of the remote is extremely annoying, but does have one advantage. You can program these buttons to send any kind of infrared signal. So if your blender happened to come with a remote, you can program one of the bottom buttons to turn on your blender. However, since there are only 23 programmable buttons and 12 of them are numbers, there is a small limit on what you can program. If you are looking for a true universal remote, there are other remotes out there that have many different modes and can send out tons of signals without having to program each one.

The design of the Xbox 360 Nyko Intelligent Remote fits with the design of the Xbox 360 very well. The entire remote is white, just like the 360, has the colorful buttons you find on a 360 controller, and has a silver guide like button at the very top. On top of that, all the buttons are backlit with a green light. So when you press any of the buttons all the buttons will light up and glow green. This is a very neat feature to have on a remote and can help you find other buttons in the dark.

The entire remote is also very light weight and fits well in your hand. It is fairly flat and then tapers out wider on the top end. The overall design is very well done, lightweight, and comfortable. However, the overall build feels a little cheap. If you dropped this remote too many times or bent it pretty hard it would probably crack somewhere. The silver 360 button at the top also doesn't seem very secured and you can move it around quite a lot; however, it is not like it is going to fall out if you turn it upside down or something.

If you watch a lot of movies on your Xbox 360, this remote is worth purchasing; however, the price tag of $20 is a little high for a simple remote of this quality. If you are just the average gamer, you won't find yourself using the Xbox 360 functions of the remote very often, if at all. In this case, it works just like a normal remote and will probably have less features than the remote that came with your T.V. and therefore not worth buying. There aren't many people out there that need a fancy Logitech Xbox 360 Harmony Universal Remote, so this is a great alternative if you don't plan on controlling the entire universe.