---
title: 'The Smart Remote I''ve Been Waiting For! Sofabaton X2 Review'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=epHTj5Q1mII'
video_id: 'epHTj5Q1mII'
date: 2026-08-06
duration_sec: 781
---

# The Smart Remote I've Been Waiting For! Sofabaton X2 Review

> Source: [The Smart Remote I've Been Waiting For! Sofabaton X2 Review](https://youtube.com/watch?v=epHTj5Q1mII)

## Summary

The video reviews the Sofa Baton X2 universal remote, highlighting its new features such as a touchscreen, IR blaster, wireless charging dock, and improved smart home integration. The reviewer shares setup experiences, addresses common concerns, and compares it to previous models and competitors.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Sofa Baton X2** [00:02] — The reviewer introduces the Sofa Baton X2 as a potential 'one remote to rule them all,' noting it replaces their smart home dashboard.
- **Upgrades from X1S** [00:31] — The X2 adds a touchscreen, IR blaster, wireless charging dock, and better smart home integration compared to the X1S.
- **Wireless Charging Dock** [01:13] — The dock keeps the remote charged and prevents losing it, but the charging indicator is small and hard to see.
- **Touchscreen and Navigation** [01:54] — The touchscreen is more intuitive than the scroll wheel, and the back arrow is now at the bottom. Digital number buttons are available, but physical buttons can be reprogrammed as macros.
- **IR Blaster Options** [02:49] — The X2 has an IR blaster on the remote, hub, and extenders, offering multiple ways to control IR devices.
- **Build Quality** [04:09] — The X2 is made of metal, giving it a premium feel compared to the plastic X1S.
- **Setup Challenges** [04:39] — Firmware update issues and inability to import settings from X1S made setup difficult, but the app now shows device connection types.
- **Activities and Usage** [06:31] — Activities allow turning on/off multiple devices with one press, and switching between activities is seamless.
- **Smart Home Integration** [07:43] — The remote can control smart home devices via Home Assistant using virtual buttons and MQTT codes, replacing a dashboard.
- **Addressing Concerns** [09:55] — The reviewer addresses comments about Home Assistant being free, compares to Remote 3 and Harmony Elite, and justifies the price.

### Conclusion

The Sofa Baton X2 is a significant upgrade over the X1S, offering premium build, touchscreen, IR blaster, and excellent smart home integration, though setup can be rough. It's a great choice for families with complex home theater setups.

## Transcript

remote. You know, the one remote to rule them all. I might have found it, the them all. I might have found it, the Sofa Baton X2. But perfect is a super high bar to reach. And I know you guys have some concerns because you let me
this recently, and we're going to address all of them. What's crazy, though, is that this remote made this Smartome dashboard completely obsolete. I don't need this anymore because this remote controls everything. It's wild. I
think you guys are going to really like it. The Sofa Vaton X2 is the new upgrade to the X1S, which I've been using for about a year now, and it's been great, but it is missing a few key features, like there's no touch screen, there's
not an IR blaster on the remote, it doesn't have a wireless charging dock, and it doesn't connect well with my smartome. And I mentioned all of this when I reviewed it about a year ago, but the great news is all of those have been
fixed with the X2 remote, and it integrates extremely well with my smart home, and I can't wait to show you guys. But first, let's talk about the wireless charging dock. This is the thing I felt like was missing the most from the X1S.
charging dock, the remote can just get thrown wherever when it's not being used or you might not know where it's charging and someone could have put it in a weird spot. Well, the wireless charging dock solves all of that. It's
always topped up on battery when you're ready to use it. And if you have the one remote to rule them all, you don't want to lose it. >> [screaming] >> BUT my one complaint is when you put the
remote back on the charging dock, the little charging symbol is so tiny up in the corner. It's hard to see unless you're looking extremely close. So, I "Hey, it's charging. It's on the dock correctly." I'm sure they could fix that
with an update. Another big update they made on the X2 is that it's now a touch screen and the back arrow is on the bottom instead of the top of the remote. And it's just so much more intuitive to use a touchcreen instead of that little
scroll wheel. A big benefit of having it be a touchcreen is that you have access to the numbers. So if you need to use the numbers for a remote, you can use it on the touchcreen, which is pretty nice. Now, I saw someone saying that they wish
the numbers were physical buttons instead of digital ones on the screen. If you are jumping between a couple different channels often and you want to use the physical buttons, you can reprogram these as macro commands to
jump between your favorite channels. So, that could be a good option for you if you don't like using the digital screen buttons to jump between channels. But, I love the touchcreen. It's so much easier for my family to use. Okay, those were
more of nice to have features. The thing that I saw people complain the most about the X1S was lack of IR on the remote. Well, the X2 has an IR blaster
on the remote now. And I'll explain how it works because it's a little bit different than it was before. So, when you're setting up a device and you want to have it powered on or off with an IR blaster, well, you can choose in the
Sofa Baton app to use the IR blaster on the remote, or there's an IR blaster on the remote, or there's an IR blaster on the hub that it can use, or there's IR extenders that plug into the hub that come with it that you can attach in
front of the amplifier or whatever you're using. But then there's also a you're using. But then there's also a fourth option. There's an IR extender that you can put in the other side of the room or a different room. And when
you're using the hub, it will tell this to blast to like say you have like a server room or something like a server rack, it could tell those devices to turn on and off as well. So, you can choose one or multiple of those options
when you're turning a device on or off. So, you're basically completely covered between all those options. if you need to turn an IR device on or off. Now, the biggest difference that you'll notice if you're coming from the X1S over to the
X2 is the higher build quality. It's made out of metal now, so it kind of has some heft to it, and it feels like a premium phone. It doesn't feel like a piece of plastic like the X1S. And there's some extra buttons that you can
program to whatever you want. But I'm just a huge fan of this redesign. It still feels familiar if you're coming from a previous sofa baton remote, but I right, when it comes to setting up the X2 remote, this is where things get a
little rocky. And it started off on a bad foot. When I went to set up the pre-production version of one of these and I was updating the firmware, it got stuck and I [snorts] tried to reset it and I just completely brick the remote.
Yeah, it just stopped working. So, they had to send me another one. This was not a pre-production. This was like the one that they're selling now, and it updated reviews out there saying the firmware didn't update, it's probably a
pre-production one. So, just probably ignore that. But when I went to set up the remote, the X2, I saw that I could back up the X1S remote. And so, I thought, hey, maybe if I just back up that, I could just import everything
over to the X2 remote. So, I tried it and >> you [screaming] shall not pass. >> I don't think they're compatible with each other. So, that was a bit of a
bummer. So, I had to reset up all the devices on the X2 and it was kind of difficult to remember how I set everything up a year ago. Like my projector couldn't remember if it was IR or Bluetooth. But now with the X2 remote
in the Sofa Baton app, it will tell you how the device is set up. if it uses Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IR or whatever, that will make it a lot easier going forward, but still kind of a pain that they don't have that for the X1S. And setting up
all the devices was still pretty similar to the way it was about a year ago. The Xbox was actually easier. I had to go through some hoops before, but this time I just added it and it worked right out of the box. the Denin receiver. It
imported all the buttons for the remote for the Denin receiver, but nothing for the Denin receiver, but nothing worked. So, I had to reprogram the IR commands for this. So, that was a little bit of a pain. But besides that, it
really wasn't too bad. And I'm not going to get into how it all works, like setting everything up. I explained that in my previous Sofa Baton review that you can go check out. But you basically set up your onoff commands for each
device. And that way you can set up activities. And activities is how you use this remote. You select activities after you create one. And instead of using the scroll wheel to select it, you use the touchcreen, slide it over, and
that will turn on the activity. When you do that, it will turn on all the devices can just use the remote like you normally would. And if you need to switch to say like watching the Apple TV over to the Xbox, you just turn on the
Xbox activity that I created and it will shut down the Apple TV, turn on the Xbox. Pretty seamless going back and forth. And then when you're ready to stop watching and turn everything off, you just press the off button up there
at the top and it will shut everything down. So it's really easy for the family to use. So yeah, the setup it can be a little bit better, but the smartome capabilities is where the X2 really shines. Now, just like the X1S, if
you're using Amazon or Google, you can have it turn on or off activities using have it turn on or off activities using the remote, but now you can use the remote to control your smartome and have the smartome control the remote a lot
better. And if you're using Home Assistant, Sofa Baton has all the instructions on there on how to set this up. It takes a few minutes to go through everything. But once you have it all set up, it's really easy to have commands
from the remote go to your smartome. So the way it works is that you'll create a device in the Sofa Baton app, a Wi-Fi device for Home Assistant, and then you'll create virtual buttons for that device that will trigger automations.
So, say I want to press the button on the remote to turn off all the lights in the house. What I would do is create a button in the sofa baton app and then it will give me the little MQTT codes and I'll create an automation using those
codes. And then I can give it any actions I want to turn off the lights, turn them on, or whatever I want to do. And then I just have to set this button on the physical remote to that virtual button to control it. And then once you
press it, it will trigger that virtual button, send a command to Home Assistant, and run the automation. Once you do it once or twice, it's not too bad. My main issue with the buttons to control the smartome is that they're
only set up for a specific activity. So, if you want to have them working on another activity, you have to program each button for that other activity as you could just set it for all the activities, but I really love having
buttons control my smart home on the remote. It's replaced that smart home dashboard. I can control the lights, the fan, everything that I want to. And it's a lot more convenient than just relying purely on automations. Like for example,
I had the lights in the room next to us automatically turn off once we start watching something, but we had guests over one day and they were turning off on them. It was really annoying. So, it can be much more convenient to press a
smart home than relying purely on automations. All right, let's wrap up this video with some of the concerns that you guys shared in the comments on the short that I made about this remote. Someone said, "If you're running Home
Assistant, your smartphone does all of this and more. Best of all, Home Assistant is free." That's true. You can do a lot of this if you have an IR blaster. And you know, Home Assistant connects to everything. But using a
remote for your family is very convenient. It's so familyfriendly for someone to just pick up the remote, press a button, everything turns on. They have a physical remote to control stuff. It's a lot easier than using an
app on your phone. So, for some people, they could probably just get away with Home Assistant, I guess. But the remote has been great for a family. Another has been great for a family. Another comment. Oh, remote 3 unfold circle is
better. Here we go. I'm sure there there's some comments down there about there's some comments down there about the remote 3 unfolded circle. So, I saw a Reddit post about this recently about some bad experiences people had with the
Remote 3 and the Remote 3 company reached out and I shared that Reddit post with them saying, "Hey, are you guys addressing some of these concerns? And if so, I would be happy to, you know, try it out or anything." They
never got back to me. So, [laughter] I I don't know. It's It is a little bit I I don't know. It's It is a little bit more expensive than the Sofa Vuitton X2. That was another concern that people brought up was the price. I think it's
brought up was the price. I think it's around $360 or like on sale for 330. Someone commented, I don't know how to pronounce their Lord Caro 8599. They were saying the Harmony Elite Remote was about the same price and that
Remote was about the same price and that came out over 10 years ago. So, the fact that it's about the same price as that, can do just as much, if not more, than the Harmony Elite Remote, shows that this isn't extremely overpriced. This is
just a premium home entertainment remote that can control everything. So, if that's something that you need, like you have a home theater system or a bunch of devices that you need to control, this might be the remote for you. It might
not be, but yeah, we've really liked the X2. It improves so much on the X1S with the touchscreen, the charging dock, the IR blaster on it, and how it integrates
in my smartome. It's really changed how we control things here in our theater room. And I wouldn't say it's perfect. You know, setting it up and everything You know, setting it up and everything was a little bit rough, but after
everything set up, it checks all the boxes that I want in a smart home remote. Check it out in the link below, and thanks for watching. Hey Reed, are you over there? I need help with the kids.