In this 3 Minute Review, I tested the SwitchBot Universal Remote Control and focused on one thing: can it actually simplify a real smart home setup? The remote itself is sleek, familiar, and super intuitive—power, back, volume, channel controls, a SwitchBot button for the main menu, plus a nice screen up top and four programmable buttons that change based on the device you’re controlling. Setup in the SwitchBot app is straightforward, and adding my SwitchBot devices (Curtain robots, SwitchBot Bots, and even on/off for my K10+ Pro vacuum) was basically painless. Where it gets really interesting is how “universal” it can be. I initially had to take my hub room-to-room to program IR devices, but once that was done, I could control all five TVs in my house directly from the remote’s built-in IR blaster. It also supports Apple TV (it says beta, but I didn’t run into issues), plus Fire TV and Chromecast. The standout feature, though, is Matter control—paired with a SwitchBot Matter hub, I integrated it into Apple Home so I could control lights, set scenes, and even trigger Shortcuts. It’s not perfect (Matter is limited to four devices right now and I had one freeze), but overall I think it’s absolutely worth it for the versatility and Matter integration.