GADGET: One for All Stealth 5 remote

Yeah yeah yeah. We know that these have been around for ages, but until very recently, the majority of universal remotes have looked ugly, felt ugly and been as temperamental as all hell.

Things have changed though, with the evolution of the Stealth 2, 5 and 12 units from One For All. As you might have guessed, the number assigned to each unit corresponds to the number of different household appliances it will control. Two is not enough, 12 gives you control over daft things like lights (what kind of lazy fucker has their lights on remote control?), but the Stealth 5 is the perfect number – meaning that your TV, DVD, stereo, digibox and at least one other device can all being managed with just one pretty doohickey.

The standard system of code-entering is the main way of tuning in the One for All, but there is a very, very clever addition. Even if there is no code for your particular unit, by pointing your old remote and the Stealth at one another, you can programme all the buttons to do exactly what you want. This means, if your exquisitely cheapo DVD player isn’t one of those listed, it doesn’t matter. Fancy being able to turn on your Wii using the same remote as your TV, stereo etc? No problem.

Then we get onto the aesthetics. Not only do these latest universal remotes look good in your living room, they feel good as well.

There is so much that these can do, there really is no need to have a pile of remote controls cluttering up your sofa anymore. Hell, you can even set up macros that will execute several button sequences, from different remotes, all with the push of one button. Amazing.

Start de-cluttering your life here.