In June, EC site sales were held one after another, such as Rakuten Super SALE and Amazon Prime Day. The author also purchased a device in order to make the home appliances smarter, which had been postponed, after a press release caught my attention.

+Style's smart multi-remote control that I bought during the sale

I got +Style's "smart multi-remote control". It was released in October 2019, more than a year and a half ago. The sale triggered me to see the name again and I decided to buy it.

　The smart remote control is convenient because it can be converted into a smart home appliance without replacing existing home appliances. My home TV is an Android TV, so I can control things like turning it on and off with my voice via Google Assistant, but I had to use the remote control for other home appliances such as air conditioners, lights, and recorders. In order to operate this via Google Home (currently Google Nest, the author uses the first Google Home) or smartphone, it is easier to make the remote control smarter than to replace everything with compatible products. It's fast and cheap.

The first thing I tried after purchasing was controlling the lighting. Originally, one of the lights in the living room was remote control compatible, so I made it possible to control it via the smart multi remote control. Next, set the TV channel change. The air conditioner can be controlled not only on and off, but also by adjusting the air volume and changing the temperature. Since it is faster to operate the recorder with the remote control after turning on the power, only starting and stopping can be done by voice.

Televisions, recorders, air conditioners, and lighting that were previously compatible with remote control were turned into smart home appliances at once

　The operation using a smartphone was easy with the +Style app. Specific frequently used operations can be called with one tap by setting "scenes" in "smart mode", and the registration process was intuitive. On the other hand, voice control was a bit of a struggle. Linking with the Google Assistant was a bit time consuming. If it's about turning the power on and off, you can now just read the +Style account from the Home app with "Works with Google", but you can't do detailed operations with that alone.

By setting a scene with the +Style app, you can quickly recall frequently used operations. This setting is also necessary when calling from Google Assistant

For example, you can manually call scenes created on the +Style side from Google Assistant routines to change the TV channel or air conditioner mode. had to set.

The most troublesome thing was the TV channel. I had to create as many scenes and routines as there were channels, which took time and effort. Since the Google Assistant did not recognize "E-Tele" easily, it was necessary to devise ways such as calling E-Tele with "Educational TV".

After registering the operation of pressing the number buttons on the remote control in the "Scene" on the +Style app side, calling it with the routine function

　However, it only takes time at the beginning. Once the settings have been completed, the rest can be controlled with just the voice, making home appliance operation more comfortable. A series of tasks such as turning on the lights after waking up in the morning, playing the weather forecast by voice, and then turning on the TV can be done with a single “OK, good morning, Google”. Even when you go out, you can turn off the lights, air conditioner, and TV all at once by saying "OK, I'm going to Google", so you don't have to panic when you don't have time. Considering that these operations are performed using multiple remote controls and switches, the impression is that the effort has been greatly reduced.

　As a secondary effect of the introduction, when the whole family went out, it became possible to turn on the air conditioner from outside. Especially in the coming season, if you turn off the air conditioner and go out, it will be hot like a steam bath immediately after returning home. If you turn on the air conditioner in advance, there is a great advantage that you can spend time in a cool room immediately after returning home. With Android 11, you can press and hold the power key to display a list of registered smart home devices and switch them on and off, so you can operate smoothly.

You can easily control your home appliances from anywhere. It's convenient to turn on the air conditioner beforehand

　As a result, it was so convenient that I bought a "smart LED light bulb" from +Style in order to convert the other half of the living room into a smart home appliance. At this rate, the light bulbs in the kitchen are likely to be replaced. It can be said that the appeal of +Style, which has a full lineup of smart home appliances, is that you can control all the products that you have gradually purchased.