Alexa Voice Remote (2nd Gen) with power and volume controls – requires compatible Fire TV device

I recently lost my original controller to my Firestick so I bought this one and it's a great replacement. It is also very easy to program and does the job well.

I received the Fire TV Stick 4K on launch day. I own the previous model and this is a much better experience. First off the remote is a huge improvement. The power button on the remote can turn on my tv, my receiver, fire stick, and switch the inputs automatically so the fire stick is on screen and ready to go with just one click of the power button. It's really nice. This is how it should have been all along. It gets even better though... lets say my TV is already on, and my receiver is set to a different input such as my FIOS tv box? All you do is click the home button on the remote and the remote switches the receiver to the correct hdmi input on the receiver for the fire stick! One remote to rule them all, and yes it controls volume on the receiver too! This is excellent. It's highly configurable. The setup is quite nice. You can define which inputs get picked when hitting the power and home button. You can define which device the volume buttons control. Amazon has done a great job with the Fire Stick 4K.It's faster than previous fire sticks. No more menu lag. Things are smoother and faster overall. I've used Roku, Chromecast Ultra and Fire Stick... I like them all for different reasons. I also dislike chromecast because 5.1 audio will not work on my receiver because chromecast refuses to support Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1. Fire stick has no problem handling DD5.1. This makes my plex and netflix experience much more enjoyable. The remote is better than not having a remote (chromecast). Roku's are very nice as well. All 3 of these options are great in their own way and frankly I had thought fire stick was the least desirable but recently I've come to realize I prefer Fire stick so I pre-ordered the 4K fire stick and I could not be happier with it. Amazon needs to keep up the good work. The 4K stick is a solid product and an excellent upgrade from the previous model

What a disappointment. The new remote paired seamlessly with my second generation Fire TV stick. It controlled power and volume on my Panasonic plasma set on the first try, and added switching control on a later try. It also recognized my Comcast X-1 cable box immediately, and I am fairly confident I will be able to use the voice command to change channels if I can ever solve the problem that inspires this review.I spell out all the things that work because they lead me to conclude that I do NOT have a defective device.So much for the good news. The bad news is that the remote simply refuses to recognize my Emotiva UMC-200 device that I use to control switching between devices and to control volume to my 7.1 speaker setup. Amazon includes Emotiva on its long list of products that will work with their remote and Amazon does not list any limits on how it works. Amazon troubleshooting pages appear to be limited to making sure that CEC is activated.I hope to update this review someday to a higher score. For now, this remote does no more than the first generation Alexa voice remote that came with the Fire stick.UPDATE - Rating increased from two to five stars. Within a few hours of posting my initial review I received an email from Amazon asking me to schedule a time for them to call and help with my problems. They asked for 48 hours and called about 50 hours from the time I wrote back.Paula said she had no experience with my equipment, but she did have detailed notes from her tech department. We followed through the steps suggested. There were a few hiccups, but we got the remote synced with the Emotiva, and later with my Comcast X-1 and Roku box in fairly short order. When we hit snags, she was able to message her tech guru and get back on path fairly quickly.I am very impressed that Amazon provided this level of customer service this quickly on a product at this price level. While I am not completely sure of this, I think they actually did an update of their programming for my particular Emotiva device.The best trick I can pass on from this experience is to keep clicking YES, even when the answer is no. It asked me to power down my processor, then asked if it worked. I said yes when the answer was no. Then it asked me to try using the volume control, and asked if that worked. It didn't but I said it did. I then made a mistake which returned me to the home page. Power did not work, said yes, then tried volume. This time it worked! It then asked for some HDMI info and then to use my original remote to change to any other input. Pushing the fast forward button then returned me to the Fire home screen. And pushing the Power button then turned the whole system off.The remote seems to learn more and to offer more setting options the further you get into the setup process. Go through it again and if things are working, you get still more changeable options.The remote is not perfect. It does not have enough buttons to do everything you might want done, and an awful lot of switching gets done by voice instead. You need to be very patient waiting for some of the voice commands to take. Still, I think it is very good value for the price. Paula and her customer service team did a great job for me on this one.

Works great with my product no issues.