★★★★★ 5
Nice Product and Customer Service
I ordered this BlastIR Wireless Pro IR Repeater from Sewell to replace a wired version of an IR repeater from another company. We have moved our TV on to a wall location and are in the process of hiding all the wiring out of sight behind walls and/or in a cabinet. We still have some wires to go, but this product has enabled us to eliminate the IR wiring all together. It's a real improvement in both looks and performance over the cheaper, wired version we originally tried.
The BlasterIR's Receiver is the component that faces the room and receives the IR signal from our remote controls. It's small enough to fit in the space between our sound bar and the bottom of the TV. It's range is great for our room size (about 22' long and 18' wide) and picks up the remotes signal from a side angle that's almost parallel to the TV itself. The receiver is powered through one of the USB ports integrated into the TV (although the device itself supports either a USB or regular plug-in option). I haven't used them yet but Sewell appears to have provided a few options to help with affixing the IR devices in their final positions including some adhesive pads and a magnetic pad option as well.
I'm still playing around with the permanent placement of the IR Blaster Emitter. It sits inside a closed cabinet and faces the concealed cable box receiver, router and DVR components. It retransmits the various IR signals it receives from the IR receiver by blasting that signal to anything it faces. I just placed it in the cabinet about 5" away from the devices I wanted to control, plugged it in and it worked with no other set up.
So far the BlastIR is working seamlessly and with much better function response time than the cheaper IR version we'd tried at first. The lag time between when a button is pressed on the remote control and the action taking place on the device I'm communicating with is minimal. The emitter itself is plugged into an outlet on a surge protector powering the other in-cabinet devices, although it too could be powered via the provided USB connection if desired.
As a note, we did experience a shipping issue during our ordering process. The order it self was processed quickly and shipped in a timely manner. However, there was an issue with our actual receipt of the product and the USPS who reported it delivered to our mailbox when in fact it had not been. Regardless, we reached out to Sewell directly and they quickly resolved the issue for us with no problems and in a timely manner. I would recommend both this IR Blaster Pro product as well as Sewell as a trusted company itself.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2021