I’ve been following the UC3 since I learned about it last July. I initially wanted to buy two to replace my Logitech Harmony Elite in the living room and a URC MX780 in the theater. This March, I was ready to start upgrading my current decade old remotes. But I bought a Sofabaton X2 for the living room because the UC3 wasn’t for sale. It had been pre-order since December or January with no products until maybe July.
This summer I’ll be ready to upgrade my theater remote. And again I’ll probably have to buy the X2 because the UC3 still won’t be available for purchase.
While the success stories describe exactly the remote I want to own, the reported problems seem largely unchanged over the past 10 months: terrible battery life, need to keep docked and charging 24/7 (with no battery preservation smart charging features), WiFi disconnects so it takes a literal minute to change the volume.
With a retail product, I’d be willing to buy it, give it a real try hoping for success, but safe knowing I could return it if works as badly as some say experience. But all I see are people trying to sell their UC3 used to recover from a bad product. I see no sign of post-sale support from the company.
So as a prospective customer, very enthusiastic a year ago but now waning interest, I’d love to have three things from Unfolded:
- Conventional retail purchase (no surprise tarrifs) with support/return/refund policies
- Road map to solutions for the major problems that seem to plague the UC3
- Marketing push with updated user reviews discussing the updates, improvements, and honestly what the remaining quirks.
I think there are multiple things to discuss here.
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Availability. Outside the Kickstarter project window, you can never buy one. You can’t succeed in a competitive market without an actual product to sell. The platform doesn’t make money, there is no advertisement, there are no lucrative contracts with CI/ distributers or hardware companies to support their brands on the platform - UC only makes money at the point of sale. How long until they run out of funds if they don’t continue to sell remotes?
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Hardware. M.a.S.E rightfully pointed out that this remote has a major hardware flaw. It’s something very basic and you wonder if the developers did any real world testing before locking the hardware platform and starting to manufacture it: this is a IP control device that struggles to connect to the internet half of the time which is ridiculous. The docks are even worse but at least you can hardwire them (and they support PoE to make deployment easier). However with the remote being the brain of the system, if your remote disconnects from the wifi, you don’t have a system. Your activity times out. There is no easy way to recover it. The remote doesn’t “know” how to keep alive IR components. If you have to restart an activity all (or some of) your IR components will be shut down and you will have to restart them manually.
Then there is the issue of the poor battery life and concern about long term reliability. Assuming 500 typical charge / discharge cycles for lithium before capacity starts to drop significantly, will there be a battery replacement service? Is it even possible to replace the battery? Even if such a service would be provided, I personally would not have much faith in their support - see point number 6.
Also, for something that is supposed to provide the tactile remote experience, the ergonomics of this remote, the spongy, rubbery, poorly defined buttons with no meaningful click / haptics, are disappointing. The screen quality is poor and hardly legible. Apart from the Apple-esque overall design, what is great about this remote control in actual use?
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Software - we are running a perpetual beta. After five years of platform development, there is no stable firmware. Forget about integrations for a minute. The KS campaign promised serial interface support. Promised 5V trigger support. Promised adaptive brightness, promised universal IR support etc. Where are these features which the hardware is SUPPOSED to support?
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Integrations. These are 100% based on the volunteer work of a few individuals. If they decide to stop supporting the community tomorrow, we will be left with Denon, Apple TV, Sonos and a handful of other “official” integrations. The end.
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Future. As you have also mentioned in your posts, there is no meaningful communication from the company regarding a roadmap. About actively working on issues or supporting features, promised or new. A CI and indeed any customer who has paid retail money on the promise of a finished product should not be kept guessing that someone is working on issues. UC can not expect its customer base to continue to support them in good will in perpetuity. After all we have paid the money and it was a lot of money by universal remote control standards. If they lack the human or financial resources moving forward maybe they should introduce a fee - monthly, yearly, new major firmware release, whatever works. Without this support the platform will fail.
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Support. I actually had a hardware problem with my remote. I had to send it back to have it repaired. The repair fixed a problem but created another. Also, as the remote was shipped back with a customs statement declaring the full retail price of the product, I was hit with a new customs charge of 88£. When I reached out to complain about the new hardware problem and to ask for the correct tax relief customs statement since this was a warranty repair, they stopped communicating altogether and from that moment onwards they have ignored me. I started a thread on this forum as well to share my experience. Nobody from the company contacted me or commented in that thread. So what happens if my expensive UC remote dies tomorrow? It’s a big leap of faith to pay this sort of money not having the reassurance of a retail support network behind the product.
Even this thread is ignored by their reps which speaks volumes about their commitment to the platform.
For me the way forward is a hardwired server. UC 3 has failed the test and if UC 4 will not have a hardwired brain, I will cut my losses and consider a HA based remote control system. Yes, UC had a potential winner in their hands but I feel they have abused the trust of their small and enthusiastic user base who have supported them with their time, their knowledge and their money. My patience only goes so far. For me UC is now just a stop gap until I find something better.
Yes, UC 3 is a much better product now than it was a year ago. But much of this progress has been achieved through community development (integrations) and workarounds for the remote’s many quirks. UC has mainly delivered excuses, blaming reliance on third party support / firmwares for the current situation.
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Yep. Been saying it for ages. Keep getting pushback. Finally the tide is turning but I don’t think anyone is listening or ever was. Each update drifts further and further away from the original promises.
This thread is just proof how little UC cares … you would think that a discussion like this on their own community forum would spark some level of response. The fact that it doesn’t speaks volumes.
It’s quite clear that UC is a project of the side of their desks for these guys. For those who followed the original YIO project, probably not a surprise, but they owed more transparency about that to everyone else. Everything about the way they have conducted themselves speaks to that and I think some people have the right to feel very let down by all of this.