Sky Glass Remote — How Does It Compare to Sky Q?
Sky launched a brand new Sky Glass Remote alongside Sky Glass. The most noticeable difference is the main remote control is color-matched to the television itself. This applies to some extent to the additional Sky Glass Remotes that come bundled with Sky Glass Pucks, though there’s no option to change the color of the Puck itself, so it’s black all around for multiscreen customers.
Both have a soft-touch finish that feels fantastic in the hand, with buttons that illuminate when the remote is fondled. Where they differ, however, is in their connectivity — the remote that comes with the television is a Bluetooth one, so it doesn’t need to be directed at the the device while in use, whereas the one in the box with the Pucks is a standard infrared one and does need to be in a line of vision.
Unlike the remote for Sky Q, the Sky Glass Remote doesn’t have a record button, nor does it have dedicated color buttons, a source button or a rewind or fast-forward buttons. Instead, the record button has been replaced with the Playlist button, the color buttons have been merged into one button, source button has been removed altogether and the scrubbing tools are now controlled by the arrow wheel.
Dedicated buttons to cycle through channels have also been removed. This feature is now controlled by clicking up and down on the arrow wheel. This was the main thing that took a bit of getting used to, but after a couple of days you hardly even go searching for the old button. Just be prepared to keep accidentally adding items to your Playlist or backing out of screens while you come to terms with the new layout.
Merging the colored buttons was a smart decision — we can’t seem them being around for a whole lot longer — but doing away with the source button is frustrating to say the least. If you’re using the Sky Glass TV, you can switch to a different input (like an HDMI) by voice control, but this isn’t supported on other televisions hooked up to a Sky Glass Puck, so an additional remote control is required to switch over.
