Waste of Money (Kameleon 6 remote control)

Member Name: slshepley

Product:	Kameleon 6 remote control
Date:	08/11/04 (2522 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Smart, One-for-all

Disadvantages: Expensive, Poor battery life

I conned my mum into buying me this for Christmas as i was sick of losing one or more of the many remotes I was accumulating. I knew that the remote carried a hefty price tag, but it seemed worth it at the time (although not something I would have bought myself).

The novelty of this item I would imagine is its main selling point and thats all I can imagine gives some justification for the around £60 that they charge for this thing.

The remote doesn't really do anything special except for lighting up when you knock it - being a one-for-all unit doesn't make it anything out of the ordinary as there are many on the market nowadays starting at about £6 for a basic model. However, being so sensitive it does tend to light up at bad times, like when you're watching a film or trying your best to get to sleep. Because of all this lighting up at the wrong time, the batteries in the Chamelion don't last very long and I'm sorry that I still haven't bought any rechargable ones.

The Chamelion comes with a wide range of codes to suit most TV's, DVD players an the rest and there is a web service which keeps the codes up to date. However, I still haven't been able to get the codes for (or program using the learn function) my cable decoder.

One thing (and maybe the only thing) that I liked with the Chamelion was the macro feature which allows you to program a sequence of key presses and associate them to one key. This comes in handy for turning all of your machines off simultaneously instead of pressing 6 of buttons, or for turning uo the volume on your TV whilst watchng a DVD.

The remote does have some element of WOW! factor, and everyone that I can think has seen the remote has asked me where they can get one. This soon dies down though when they find out how much it costs... for a remote control!

There have been no faults with the remote control (and I've even dropped it on the wooden floor a few times) sp it seems to be well made and hard wearing - although the plastic screen does look a bit cheap.

Overall, I'm glad that I've got the Chamelion but even gladder that I didn't have to fork out the money for it. I'd recommend putting it on your wish list but you definately shouldn't buy one for yourself - you won't be able to enjoy it knowing what else you could have bought with the fairly hefty premium!

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