The folks at One-For-All sent me a new Xsight Touch universal remote control to look at, and it’s pretty impressive. Sleek, black, shiny. And that’s just the power plug. The rest isn’t too shabby either. I’ve tried a range of these universal remotes from various manufacturers over time and all of them have failed to deliver at some point or another, but it looks as though this Touch model has what it takes to cope with just about every hardware configuration out there.

The company claims to have a database of 3,300 unique brands and 285,000 individual codes, and certainly set up with the device was the simplest I’ve experienced. Just point and press, select a genre and brand of product and cycle through the options. Once it’s set up, you can then start to customise the settings of your activities and favourite channels to make it easy to watch or listen to your entertainment systems with one button press.

The two main differences with this model are the touchscreen, which is nice but not earth shattering, and the slider bar for cycling through options, which is actually an excellent navigational aid. You can store up to 18 device settings on the remote, which should be enough for most people, and you can group favourite channels by user (e.g. Frank, Sheila, Little Hans). The thing is future proofed via USB connectivity to your computer, which means online updates are easy to do.

It’s not cheap at around £147.00 or so, but if you’re suffering from total remote mania, then this is one way to restore some sanity to your set up. And it works.

 Activities * Control multiple devices without swapping between modes. Up to 18 Activities per remote. Favorites * Display your favorite channel logos on the screen of the remote, and the remote will automatically tune to that channel by sending a macro when you select the logo. Up to 72 Favorites per remote. Profiles * Group favorite channels by user (Mom, Dad, Kids), or Genre (Movies, Sport etc). Up to 6 Profiles per remote.