Remotes

[WillowSpirit]

Ive seen complaints about these defective remotes going as far back as 2018! Countless thousands of complaints about these god awful products, for YEARS and theyre still selling defective remotes? This company is worth billions and they cant figure out to make a remote that works properly? Spare me the excuses created to control negative PR. Almost everyone I know uses multiple Rokus and almost everyone I know who uses them is so fed up with the defective remotes theyre talking about switching to firestick or other competitors, many of my loved ones already have. I will be too soon. Rest assured Roku doesnt give a shiz about their customers or quality control. 

[HDMIGuy]

I have six Roku remotes.  They all work just fine.

[makaiguy]

And yet it is not a universal problem.  Over the last 10 years or so I've had five or more different Roku models, all connected via WiFi, and none of them have had batteries that didn't last 3 months or more, even with heavy daily use.  I don't know of anyone reporting they figured out why some people's remotes eat up batteries prematurely and others don't.

One thing known to reduce remote battery life is on those few remote models that have a built-in headphone jack.  Headphone use does reduce battery life.  The remote's internal headphone amplifier is energized any time there is something plugged into the headphone jack, even when the Roku is not in use, so one should always unplug the headphones when done using this feature..

There is a bit of anecdotal evidence from a few people who have found that by changing their router configuration to use a less congested WiFi channel they have improved remote battery life.

[DBDukes]

@WillowSpirit 

All mine work great. I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

[LibertyVillain]

If you don't mind me asking, why so many remotes? I've noticed a number of people report having numerous remotes, am curious, thx😌

[sully677]

On my 2nd one in months. I hold stock in Roku, but their product quality control sucks and I am considering switching to Google or Apple and selling the stock. No improvement in years in the remotes. 

[DBDukes]

@LibertyVillain 

I have multiple Roku devices, therefore multiple remotes. All work great. 

[StreamerUser]

Of my 9 current devices, 7 of which have WiFi Direct 'Point Anywhere' remotes, 3 of those suffer the battery draining issue in some form or another (worse when the devices arent powered for longer periods), so I generally remove the batteries from any Rokus that arent frequently being used.

Other than the battery drain issue (which is bad, and longstanding going back years), the only other remote-related issue is the defective remote finder functionality (goes back more than a year, though reduced in the 4800, and particularly bad with the 4670 and the RC496). I havent used the functionality (aside from testing), but it is a problem for those that do.

Otherwise the remotes have held up without any other issues.

[BB25]

I'm new to Roku and am so dissapointed with them currently. I was in love after taking a chance on pulling th plug with cable. I thought it was an issue with the batteries at first when I noticed that I was changing the batteries frequently. I thought that I must have been using old batteries. Consequently, I purchaed a pack of new batteries and then proved that it wasn't an isuue with old batteries, it was the remote draining the batteries. I've had all kinds of remotes over the years as many adults have had in their homes and I have never experienced changing out batteries so frequently.

I'm so glad to find out that others are experiencing the same issue-unfortunately, or fortunately, that fact validates my issue. I'm glad that others have not experience this issue-good for them. However, for those of us experiencing the problem, we are not crazy nor imaging the issue-and it's frustrating. It is happening to us and the darn remote is sucking up the life out of batteries at an unbelievable rate.

[GJH1]

I have multiple Roku’s. One has the pairing which started out being an occasional issue but now occurs every day.  I have another that has started to occasionally have the issue. There are numerous posts about this issue on the web and I would agree that Roku doesn’t seem to care which speaks volumes about their corporate culture. 
I will be switching these devices out to Apple TV which although pricey work flawlessly and have much better performance.