What Universal Remote Works With Firestick?

Most newer universal remotes today work with Amazon Firestick, you have the Logitech Harmony, Philips Universal, Sofabaton, GOWELL, Sideclick, and more.

So this is a better time than any getting a universal remote for all your TV equipment.

Before I got a Firestick compatible universal remove, my problem with the previous setup was that I had a remote for pretty much every device attached to the television.

Blu Ray player, Smart TV, Sound system, cable box, and Philips Hue Lights. All these had separate remotes which I had laying on the coffee table.

What a mess, right?

TL;DR I ended up getting the Logitech Harmony Companion, It has great compatibility with the Firestick and even though it isn’t the cheapest, I think it has the greatest value for money.

So I decided to look for a universal remote to replace all these remotes with. One advantage is that all my devices are already compatible and connected to my Amazon Echo, to which my Amazon Firestick is also connected. And the second advantage was that now I had the new exciting tech to buy. WIN-WIN.

This meant that if I could find a remote which is compatible with my Amazon Echo or Firestick everything would just fit and work together nicely and easily.

To my surprise, a lot of universal remotes are actually compatible with both Amazon Echo and Firestick, and even compatible with Google Nest/Home too, which I also have use cases for.

Most universal remotes can both be connected with Bluetooth and/or wifi, most also have infrared (IR), which is useable if you don’t have a Firestick, Chromecast, or a smart TV.

I would recommend getting as many devices as possible on your Wifi because this will make everything work together more seamlessly as everything will be connected all the time.

5 Universal remotes compatible with Firestick

These universal remotes are compatible with Amazon Firestick:

1. Logitech Harmony Universal Smart Control
2. Philips Universal Companion Remote For Fire TV
3. SofaBaton U1
4. GOWELL Bluetooth Remote
5. Sideclick Remote For Fire TV

Logitech Harmony Companion

The Logitech Harmony Companion is definitely the first remote I’ll recommend. This is also the remote I ended up buying. But I might also be biased towards this remote because of all the other Logitech stuff I own. Still though if I have to look at this remote objective it definitely has plusses and minuses.

First of all, I want to mention the good parts.

The most important thing related to this article is that the Logitech Harmony Companion is compatible with Firestick.

In fact, the Logitech Harmony Companion is pretty much compatible with everything. Here is a list of a few of the things you can connect with to a Logitech Harmony:

• All Amazon products (Echo, Firestick, Alexa, etc.)
• Apple TV
• Philips Hue Lights
• Sony (Pretty much everything)
• Sonos
• Libratone
• Google Nest, Google Home and Chromecast
• Lutron
• IFTTT (If This Then That)
• PS3, PS4 and PS5 in the near future
• Wii
• Nvidia Shield
• Roku
• Windows
• macOS

The Logitech Harmony Companion connects with over 270.000 other devices! So I’m sorry that I’m not going to mention all of them here. If you want to see a list of more integrations I would recommend their own site here: Logitech Harmony Companion Compatibility List

Logitech states that you can connect almost everything to this remote and program it yourself to fit your needs. Other than just the normal stuff like TVs, boxes, DVD players, Blu-Ray players, Consoles, and more, you can actually connect thermostats, lighting, locks, and much more.

The Logitech Harmony Companion is a perfect fit into a smart home, or may actually also be a good start to making your home smarter.

It connects to devices via Bluetooth, IR (infrared), and/or Wifi. It can use all the different connections methods at the same time and devices and cross communicate across the different connection technologies. So there should really be any issues here, even if you have older stuff you want to connect with.

As of now I only have one real downside to this product, which is the price. It is to be expected that the price will be high because it is Logitech after all and they aren’t exactly known for their cheap equipment.

As of writing this article, the remote will set you back $180. That’s pretty expensive for a remote, even it being a really smart one. I also think it’s too expensive relative to its competitors.

Maybe a good price would have been 30-40% off its original price, so I would buy this remote on a sale. Maybe a good buy for Black Friday or Cyber Monday?

Philips Universal Companion

The Philips Universal Companion is a really great universal remote for its price of just 25 bucks. Kind of impressive what you get in that package really.

This remote will be perfect for your Amazon Fire TV. It can easily replace your remotes for all standard TV equipment and do it well. It’s very simple to set up, it’s even preprogrammed for Samsung TVs, Philips TVs, and Roku boxes.

Other than that setting up new devices is pretty simple too with its automatic code search. A cool feature as well is its “Flip & Slide” cradle which actually fits a Fire TV remote. The Fire TV remote is sold separately from this remote but makes it a really good companion.

But this remote also has downsides. It’s definitely not as smart as the Logitech Harmony. It can only connect up to 4 different audio and video devices. This means that it’s only a remote replacement and not really great new addition to the control of your smart home.

If you are looking to only get rid of all your remotes and use a single and not looking for THE smart remote solution, I think it’s a great product for you. And for its price, it’s definitely worth it!

SofaBaton U1

Take a look at this list of products and brands SofaBaton U1 is compatible with:

• Fire TV, Firestick, Echo, TV Cube, etc.
• Apple TV
• Nvidia Shield
• Roku
• TiVo
• Pretty much all Smart TVs in the world
• Xbox
• PS3, PS4, PS5 (Soon to come)

I’m just going to stop here and provide the link if you want to see more.
SofaBaton U1 compatible brands.

It’s pretty damn amazing because you are actually going to have the same capabilities with this remote as you are with the Logitech Harmony. I honestly almost bought the SofaBaton U1 instead.

I think it just came down to how biased I really am towards Logitech plus one other reason I will explain later.

If you don’t specifically care about the branding, I will recommend this remote over the Logitech or any other one here.

You can easily find the remote on a sale for around $50. Which is just stupidly cheap for this remote. The normal price is around $70, which is just about fair for this remote, maybe even still in the cheaper end compared to all it can do.

Now for another reason why I specifically didn’t choose this product, was because of the connectivity. It connects very easily to IR and Bluetooth, but it isn’t capable of connecting through Wifi. This is just a huge turn-off for me personally because all my smart devices are connected to my Wifi.

It can connect up to 15 different entertainment devices. Great. Why not more though? What is limiting it? Well, I guess you wouldn’t really need more devices connected than 15 anyway but would be good to see it just unlimited.

Back to another great selling point of this remote!

It has an inbuilt OLED display which will give you a quick overview of which devices you are currently connected to and makes it a lot easier for switching around between the devices. It gives you a small but great UI which you can interact with using the small scroll wheel places just below the screen. This is just a huge plus in my book, I really wish that the Logitech Harmony had this.

GOWELL Bluetooth Remote

GOWELL is a really neat product, but it’s definitely not for everyone.

They claim that it works even better than the remote for the actual Fire TV. Well, it has much to improve so I won’t set that bar too high.

But yes they are correct, it is better because it can do more, way more.

It only connects to devices via Bluetooth or IR. But let’s try and forget about that argument because you’ll actually get something pretty cool with this remote.

The Gowell remote connects to pretty much all Smart TVs and Smart TV devices such as Android TV Box, Raspberry pi 3, Chromecast, etc. It can easily handle your sounds system too and all the other usual equipment.

Now let’s get to the real argument for this remote; the QWERTY keyboard on the backside!

If you use your TV in any way for surfing or browsing through the internet or social media this remote WILL BE PERFECT FOR YOU. Sorry for yelling. But seriously, you can get this remote for under $25. That is a crazy amount of value for such a relatively small price.

It really serves a specific but good niche that is TV surfers and it does so for a really great price. Often when you see these niche products the price is just crazy high, but with this, they kept it relatively low.

However, I will say that you can feel why the price is so low. The material is not the greatest, but hey, it’s a remote, not a throwing toy so it doesn’t really have to be made of titanium.

Sideclick Remote for Fire TV

If you already own a Fire TV or Firestick you may already have a remote for it. The remote is simple and decent but is specifically made for the Amazon Fire TV and Firestick.

What if you are happy with the Fire TV remote and not really in for a change, but still finding all the other remotes pretty damn annoying?

Well, the Sideclick has a pretty neat solution for you. It is basically just an add-on to your Fire TV remote. Basically, it’s a smaller universal remote that you attach to your Fire TV remote by clicking it on it.

The universal add-on can control all the standard TV equipment and make your Fire TV remote into a universal remote control.

Sideclick has many models in this category. If you, for example, own an Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, Roku, or anything else they have attachments for these as well. So you buy the attachment which fits your needs.

I do think they are relatively expensive because they are only attachments that are not connected via Wifi or have any multipurpose functionality.

They only connect to their individually fitted purpose.

The remotes vary a bit in prices but you’ll easily spend above $20 for an attachment like this. It’s not very expensive and if you love your Fire TV remote I would say it’s worth it because it’s really simple and looks like an easy fix. But there are definitely better overall solutions which has much more capabilities and opportunities.

The verdict

I hope you’ve found this article somewhat useful.

As I mentioned earlier I ended up buying the Logitech Harmony Companion myself even though it is the most expensive one. Partly because I’m biased towards Logitech with all my other gear, but also because it has the Wifi connectivity which many other brands just don’t have yet.

The Wifi allows me to really unleash its full potential and actively use it in my smart home to control the Philips Hue Lights, thermostats, curtains, robot vacuum, and much more. As a fun experiment, I literally made my Neato robot vacuum turn on and start vacuuming when I turn my TV off. And I could even make it stop vacuuming when I turned the volume of the TV down.

I don’t know the specific use case of this, it was just a fun experiment and now a pretty cool example. But the Logitech Harmony Companion is just the real universal remote that will literally replace any form of remote or control in your home.

If money is not an issue, the Logitech Harmony Companion is actually only one remote in a series of products. The Companion is actually the cheapest model.

One example is the Logitech Harmony 950.

Honestly and I think the other models are way overpriced. For the Harmony 950 they basically just made it more premium and included an OLED screen with a simple UI. The OLED is very cool, but it’s just not worth it when you see the price.

The Harmony 950 will set you back over $350 and the other models with OLED screens are even more expensive. And I really couldn’t find any significant difference to the companion other than the screen.

But if money is not an issue, definitely go for it. I couldn’t imagine other than it is a great product.

Resources

https://www.sideclickremotes.com/

https://byjasco.com/philips-universal-companion-remote-fire-tv

http://www.sofabaton.com/u1.html

https://www.logitech.com/da-dk/product/harmony-companion?crid=60

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