The Good
The remote itself. I've had so many remotes in the past, in various price ranges. They all lacked something in terms of build quality. Regardless of their functionality, either the weight, looks, button quality or the layout where off. But the Skip 1s has this really premium look and feel! I just love the button feel and travel (no 'click' sounds), the matte finish as opposed to the cheap glossy plastic look and it's nice weight. A premium solid remote!
If in the future a Bluetooth version (with voice control) comes out, I would certainly buy one.
The Bad
The Skip 1s Software. It's just not there yet....
At first glance it looks nice and has a nice interface. But when you start using it, problems begin to arise. There are many counter-intuitive ways you'll have to through to achieve something. Actions that otherwise can be accomplished with just one or two clicks, are forced to be taken by the 'long route'. But those I can live with.
It's the many inconsistencies, flaws and other curiosities that are causing frustrations. I would make for a long topic to mention them all, but here and here are some of my findings.
There are (at least for now) two major flaws that are utterly frustrating:
SYNCING
Well it's NOT really, its just only WRITING. Syncing suggest a two way operation. Changes made on one side should be reflected on the other.
Imagine this scenario:
Configuring your remote is not something you do on a daily basis. Initially you'll spend hours configuring (at this moment in time) to ultimately get the remote to do what you'll want. Then it's 'Set and Forget'. You go and use the remote. After a few weeks/months you'd want to change something. Most likely you won't have the software installed anymore or you'll want to use an another PC (laptop) altogether. So, you install the software again and are presented with a clean late. No worries you'd think, just plugin the remote because it would read the remote configuration by SYNCING, no? Just as if I would reinstall my One Drive/Google Drive, all would be there again locally.
Sadly, I can't SYNC as the software can't read from the remote, it can only WRITE. At least I haven't found a way.
But I do have a backup right?
IMPORT BACKUP
Yes! But it can become quite useless. If your devices (TV, Audio, Settop box etc.) are still the same, you can probably use that backup. However, if something has changed in that setup (you've bought another brand of TV), you'll need to add that device to your activities. Doing so, would require you to edit your activity via the cogwheel -> Wizard or Mappings. But once you've added your brand new TV as a device, all painstakingly manual previous mapped buttons are in their default state! Arrghhhh!!! Gone is your hard work...So much for backups.
Sharing your config with another person becomes utterly useless this way. Nobody has the same hardware. So eventually, if they use your shared config, they would need to add there own devices, in which case you would loose the pre-made mappings.
The Ugly
The utter lack of response from the developers or even the forum admins for that matter. I've pointed out some minor, but most importantly, some serious matters and asked questions about those. No reaction whatsoever. Very, very disappointing...