Review: Blumoo Smart Control – Transform your smartphone into a universal remote

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I have 2 young kids and a wife, how I keep tabs on my remotes for my entertainment center is nothing short of a miracle. Any time I plan on sitting down to watch TV, I have a 5-10 minute ritual of frantically searching around my house in an attempt to find one of my 2 missing remotes.

When Blumoo asked us if we had an interest in taking a look at their universal remove device, I was a little skeptical. In all fairness, most phone-based universal remotes are pretty bad and don’t include all the features that the full remotes have. However, we told them to send the device on over because we love tech here.

First Impressions

My initial experience with Blumoo Smart Control was a little rough, the app wasn’lt initially compatible with either of my phones, so I ended up waiting until their CEO personally emailed me to get the software updated. However, once I was able to get the software updated, setting up the remotes and syncing the IR/Bluetooth device was actually pretty easy.

On a level of functionality, the Blumoo app and device were able to sync up with almost everything, including my Xbox One. I really thought this was cool and was impressed with all I could do from one app. 

Now, on a functionality side of things, I initially had a remote dedicated for each one of my devices. While this worked, there was still a slight amount of inconvienenve each time I tried to switch devices. I found that I was ultimately able to build my own custom setup so I could have the usual button keys that I normally use.

The receiver was super easy to set up and had a long enough cord for me to pull it out to sync up with my devices. Where this excels over the run of the mill vanilla app experiences is that the repeater can actually transmit strong enough to bypass traditional remote obstacles. For example, I can’t use my remote for my TV at all angles because my sound bar sits in front of the TV. With the repeater, it works awesomely.

Final Verdict

I’d be a liar if I said the overall experience wasn’t good. The only major gripes I really have are that the Blumoo app isn’t aesthetically pleasing and almost looks a little janky. It looks dumb but works great. The other issue I had was that the learning curve is a bit of a pain. There seem to be almost mandatory swipe controls, I’m still not at all used to that and I don’t know if I will ever be.

If you want to utilize a real universal remote experience on par with something like a Harmony remote, but don’t want to spring on the price, the Blumoo Smart Control may work wonderfully for you.

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Josh Knowles

Longtime games journalist and Florida resident. I'm a Guinness World Record holder, wordsmith extraordinaire, MOBA fan, devoted dad and husband. I'm here to spread the gospel of video games.