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...Continued from Page 7.
The light and bright of it.
One major benefit of Kameleon technology is that the backlight is the screen – it has to light up for anything to be usable. So, since the remote needs to be usable under all possible lighting conditions, UEI spared no expense at designing the brightest, most stunning panel available. The light can be configured to one of eight intensity levels (setup code 9-7-4), which range from “bright” to “extremely bright”. In a moderately well-lit room I found it difficult to tell the difference between most of the brightness levels (no feedback is provided on which level is active), and found it best to go by sound.
Sound? Well, like all equipment sporting electroluminescent backlights, the 15-2133 features a voltage inverter that pumps the battery’s 5 to 6 DC volts up to a much higher AC voltage. This inverter typically makes a humming sound when it operates – typically, the brighter the display the louder the sound (remember that some inverters are quieter than others).
In the 15-2133’s case, each of the eight brightness levels generate a different audible sound. The lowest setting produces a deeper, softer hum, while the highest setting creates a higher, louder buzz. In a quiet room and at the brightest setting, I found it possible to hear the 15-2133’s inverter from over 20 feet away, but then again my hearing is irritatingly acute. Even so, the sound isn’t overly loud or obnoxious, and the vibrant aqua blue light produced is well worth the slight aural distraction. Still, I wonder if it could have been even brighter had UEI not used a screened grey color for button printing.
Pressing all the right buttons.
The backlight activates from either movement of the remote or by touching a button – though the latter option will likely never be used since it’s practically impossible to even look at it without triggering the super-sensitive pickup sensor. The sensor is so twitchy that even a movie with moderate subwoofer action will wake a 15-2133 sitting peacefully all by itself. The screen power-off timeout is a mere – and un-adjustable – 10 seconds. The backlight fades on and off and screens fade in and out of different devices – very neat.
From a tactile standpoint, compared to a regular keyed remote the 15-2133 leaves something to be desired – hard button aficionados will no doubt be hard to win over. But compared to a traditional glass touchscreen it’s a huge step forward. When a button is pressed, the whole flexible plastic surface depresses, then pops back firmly. The tactile response difference between a “button” and a “non-button” is quite noticeable, something not experienced on a traditional LCD.
I found the surface to be a little loose and bulgy, particularly around the narrow section at the top where the six device buttons lie. Several times the screen surface stuck in the depressed state, only to pop back into shape 20 seconds later (and activating the backlight).
Finding a button to press.
When inactive it’s impossible to see any of the remote’s buttons... except possibly by the finger smudges. Even active the touch surface features no physical cues as to where buttons lie – it’s absolutely flat. I’ve been told that embossing the Kameleon surface with button outlines or something else to enable “blind touch use” is possible, but that obviously didn’t make it to this particular model.
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