Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips SRU7140 - Universal remote control - infrared

This remote is packed in one of those annoying hard to open and easy to ruin blister packs. Once open you discover a neat and relatively clear remote control. It does have some quirks but overall is a great little thing.

Slide:
Although it may look like a mobile phone, the slide function on this remote is a bit wobbly. This is entirely down to how the hinge is attached. It's sprung, and quite nice to move, but it does jiggle a bit when closed. Still it's a remote right? It certainly doesn't look like it'd break despite this, so it's not a big issue.

Batteries:
Yup - coin cells. Two included with it and fitted with a plastic pull tab to activate. I only mention the batteries as I had a power problem until I removed them and put them back in the remote. The power was fading out of the LED and this gave me the clue that things weren't right. Just rejigged them and its been fine since.

Setup:
Pretty easy but you do need to read the manual. The learning function isn't at all clear due to a *pre-training* step. The pre-training guides you to where the best position is for the remotes. Once done, STOP pressing the original remote. Once you've selected a feature in the SRU7140 tap the button on the original remote, don't hold it, otherwise you blow out the internal memory and it doesn't learn properly.

I learnt that gem through pain.

Button Layout:
Buttons are laid out quite logically although the cursor keys only cycle between two function sets. What do I mean? Well, some devices need THREE function sets. Sky+ for example needs a Play/FF/RW/Stop set, a cursor up/down/etc set and a coloured button set.

To solve this problem I have three different devices, but assign play/cursor to one device and cursor/coloured buttons to the other.

Essentially I have TV, DVD and Sky+ but scattered across four devices in the remote.

Summary:
A unique and small remote. A little fiddly to set-up just right, but worth it in the end.

It's a lot smaller than i thought, who says it's a remote, at a glance looks more like a sliding mobile phone about the same size plus the design of the buttons on the lower part, minus the LCD display which are on some remotes. When open still short, remote controls usually about eight inch long and onwards,as for replacement remote controls - eg. for use of dvd players don't have specific functions (multi-angle, subtitles, repeat and audio) only the original remote goes with the hardware, SRU 7140 has this function. It operates 2x (although says one on product info page) CR2032 button batteries rather than standard AAA or AA, when select device function it's lights up blue also the buttons are soft touch. Five star rated for design and the ease of use.

Yes the product is dinky hiding the mass of buttons u never use on a remote. However it just doesn't have enough buttons to allow a complete replacement for even a TV let alone DVD & STB. The overloading of functions onto the compass rose for teletext+play+arrow functions is OK until your STB needs all three and u can only have 2 (normal and shifted) functions associated with a button.

However the clincher is the poor build quality. If u keep it closed it is OK. But open, it rattles like a cheap plastic toy.

To cap it all after only 2 months moderate use the supplied battery was so low the unit starts failing. Hopefully the new one will last nearer the stated 12 months lifetime!

The design in principle is a good idea, but it needs much better build quality and an extra 4 separate coloured teletext buttons at least.