Another negative—which was not the case originally—is that they now require you to create an account and sign in to use their app, which is required to program the remote. Before there were no accounts, and now it's mandatory.
I was able to get the Sofabaton U1 to operate much like a Harmony remote (using the advice from the Amazon review) for 3 "activities"- watching the Nvidia Shield, FireTV or Blu-Ray player - a couple of things I noticed:
(1) you can't use bluetooth remote commands in macros
(2) The IR emitter is a big problem - tight beam and limited range; by comparison the Harmony IR remotes are way better
Programming issues aside, this remote might actually be usable except for the IR problem.
I was able to disassemble the remote and noticed the IR emitter was not at the ideal angle for transmission, so I bent it, but that didn't help - a possible next step would be to drill a hole for the IR emitter in case the plastic is somehow impairing the signal - or replace it with another emitter - any technical people out there tried anything to improve this?
(There doesn't seem to be a lot of info on the internet about this remote)
Has anyone purchased the Sofa Baton X1 yet? Reviews and opinions?
I ordered one with the Kickstarter deal. Have not received it yet
Same, one on order but have not received it yet.
Yes, this is the biggest problem I have. Otherwise, the remote does everything I need it to do. The IR actually works ok for me when the batteries are brand new, but after several weeks it is noticeably degraded and can barely adjust the volume on my TV from 15 ft away.
Wow, I'm surprised you Kickstarter backers still haven't received your X1's. I have been looking forward to trying one, but I missed out on the Kickstarter. Originally I was told the remotes would be available to order from Amazon in January. The latest word was they will now be available in March, but I didn't realize not all the Kickstarter orders have even been fulfilled yet.
Am i reading this correctly that it's going to be almost $200?
I just got mine also. 
I got mine too. Very disappointing to say the least. Bad first impressions
Why bad impression. Tell me. What's bad/good with it
Activities do not work most of the time. Example: fails to change the inputs in my Denon receiver
Battery life is very bad. Needs charging every day
Screen is useless. Very low resolution and no custom icons (just some generic ones)
Very slow to react on anything. Creating activities, adding devices, anything
The hub loses connection to my Wifi daily. Everytime I want to use it, prompts me to connect to WiFi again, and again, and again.
I still have a Harmony Touch from many years ago, that still works much better in every possible regard. I was hoping this was going to be a replacement long term, but I don't think so now.
This mirrors my experience from this afternoon.
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I cannot for the life of me program the directional buttons(I have the U1 and an Amazon Fire Toshiba tv), I e tried using my olde remote to program it and sleep
Selecting the command in the app but no luck. Any suggestions? You seem to have it pretty well figured out!
For those looking into the sofabaton I got burned a little bit this week. I picked up a U1 with the assumption that there would be bluetooth control of volume when paired to the apple tv.
It turns out that the volume buttons need to be IR when using the built in “apple tv” Bluetooth device.
This only really matters if you desire to control volume of airpods when they are paired to the apple tv for “quiet listening” mode..
I think you might be able to solve this by connecting the remote as a “keyboard”.
With the harmony remotes you can add a Mac/windows computer as a Bluetooth device and when it makes the pairing - you pair it with the Apple TV instead of a computer of course.
And then with abit of help from the channels website and trial and error you can work out what the keys on the “keyboard” control on the Apple TV.
Another plus to this solution is you can then use the number pad to change channels as CDVR will recognise keyboard number inputs(as well as a number of other inputs).
I had a similar problem with my receiver connected to my ATV. My solution was to add 2 ATV devices to my U1, one device with bluetooth and the other with IR. Then I remapped the volume buttons and mute on the U1 for the bluetooth device, replacing those buttons with the volume and mute buttons from the IR device.
Thank you
The issues isnt getting channels to work.
That works perfectly with the sofabaton.
Edit:
Sofabaton updated their software on ios. It appears they added bluetooth volume control 3 days ago.
I tried your suggestion of using a Bluetooth keyboard assignment, and with some fiddling i noticed alternate volume controls (named differently) When I switched over-to those, I could adjust my airpods volume.
After more playing around i noticed that sofabaton had fixed an issue with pairing the sofabaton to the ios app. I guess they fixed the Bluetooth commands as well. After deleting my origional Bluetooth apple tv remote and re adding it. The new one now supports bluetooth volume control.
So im a happy camper!
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