REVIEW OF APPLE TV SIRI REMOTE

It’s so much better. But the moment Apple showed off the second-generation Siri Remote, it was obvious that this would be a huge improvement over its detested predecessor. It’s easy to tell which way is right side up when you reach for it. The clickable touchpad area that dominated the upper third of the prior remote has been replaced by a more intuitive D-pad. The Siri button has been pushed to the remote’s right side, almost guaranteeing that you’ll never unintentionally trigger Apple’s voice assistant. And now there’s a proper power button for your TV.

It feels really nice, too. Apple makes the remote from a unibody aluminum shell that’s taller, heavier, and considerably thicker than the old Siri clicker. It’s slightly narrower than the black remote but still feels larger on the whole — and that’s a positive. 

The previous Siri remote was so thin that it was easily lost to the deepest reaches of the couch. I don’t see that being as much of a problem with the new, chunkier hardware.

The Siri Remote is in keeping with Apple’s renewed fondness for hard edges. With the remote gripped in hand, you never really feel the edges on the front, but you do at the back. The back metal is curved, but there’s still a hard edge at both sides. As long as you don’t squeeze the remote too tight, it should prove reasonably comfortable.

Instead of putting what basically amounted to a trackpad on the top section of the remote, Apple has switched to a much more traditional directional pad. Within that circular D-pad is a touch-sensitive center button that still lets you swipe around content or move in any direction just like you could before. (And yes, you can still play with the subtle movement of app icons on the home screen by gently nudging your thumb around.) But some streaming apps didn’t work perfectly with that input method, so Apple is now including the far more precise D-pad.

This choose-your-preferred-navigation method — Apple calls it the “clickpad with touch surface” — has a very short learning curve. Initially, I would inadvertently activate the touchpad when I just meant to move my finger from down to up or vice versa on the D-pad. That didn’t last long, but if it winds up a bigger hassle for you, there’s an option in the remote’s settings menu to assign the center button to “click only,” which gives the D-pad all navigation duties.

Apple has also come up with a clever jogwheel function that lets you circle a finger around the outer ring to scrub through videos at faster or slower speeds depending on how quickly you’re thumbing around the circle. It’s a direct callback to the days of the iPod clickwheel and does a great job helping you land on an exact moment in a video.