I'm seeing an average of about 2 weeks for battery life in the M2. This is for an M2 with light to medium use (about 4 hours of TV channel changing each day). The batteries used are brand new Energizer AAA. The tilt mechanism is on, the backlight is on manual (backlight not used much) and the time-out is set to 10 seconds.

What are others seeing?

Dino

I saw the same today, I had a customer's M2 set to 15 sec with backlight active always when tilting it or using it. Week and a half seems a little too quick to me. At that rate they will be burning through batteries fast, which could get to my conscience.

What do the MX 850's get as a comparison, if anyone would care to comment?

The 850's averaged around 3-5 months with average use. The 900 about the same.

The re-chargable battery in a 950 will last about two years before you get less than a couple of days on a charge. I just replaced my 950 battery for a whopping $8!!

RTI has a great product.

They do seem to require a lot of power to operate.

I'm still shocked that they released a non re-chargable remote.

OK, I just got an email response back from RTI, they are saying 2 weeks is not normal, and that I should call for an RMA. They said closer to 6 months of use would be more usual, depending on use of course.

So a bad batch?

I'll be calling today.

RF or IR?

It is set for RF.

2 weeks is not acceptable by any stretch.

What are you other impressions with this remote??

Im looking at it as a T1 Upgrade/Cross. Upgrade as now you can relabel the Inputs and place wait pages on the top...its still a hard button remote.

Cross because you lose the charger and now use batteries

The Icons are a tad on the small, but if you use an icon with larger text it should be OK

I have one for myself but have yet to program it and use it

Other than the battery life issue (I got an RMA on Friday), the only other issue I found is the one I talk about in this thread:

[Link: remotecentral.com]

Other than that, I think it's a great entry level remote, and has more flexibility than a T1.

Dino

So I got the replacement M2 from RTI on Sept. 12. Last night I noticed that the "low battery" warning symbol had already appeared. I'm guessing the remote only has a few more days of life left before I'll need to replace the batteries again. So not even two weeks this time.

I wonder what's going on? I can't imagine I got two defective remotes back to back, so there must be a bug in either the hardware or firmware that's causing excessive current draw from the batteries.

I am using RF only, but I'm testing this remote out at home in the living room. My wife watches most of the TV there, and I would guess she doesn't watch more than about 4 hours a day and uses it for channel changing and Tivo. Pretty "average" use I would say.

Anyone else have some more experiences to share now that the M2 has been out for a little longer now? What are others seeing for battery life? Brett from RTI was telling me that the M2 should run for at least 4-6 months on a set of batteries before needing replacement (depending on usage).

Dino

I actually put an M2 in my house to test it out.

Batteries are still going strong after 2 weeks, however instead of turning on backlight when remote is active, I programmed it to only turn on if you press the light button.

Unless I have dog ears, while my wife swears I can't hear, I don't like the high pitch whine that comes out of the M2 when I press the light button. I have installed several with this condition or problem. In a quiet theater on mute you definitely can hear it.

gwilly, i've been running with the backlight on manual too (doesn't turn on automatically). Still draining batteries.

Also, my wife and I both hear the high pitched whine, but it doesn't bother us too much.

I'm waiting to see what RTI has to say.

Dino

I am noticing the same thing with all of the m2's that I've done. We have about 5 in the field. All about 2-3 weeks. Until RTI figures this out I've been including a battery charger and 4 AAA batteries with all of the remotes that I've installed. That way they always have a fresh battery.

Why not just up-sell to a T2+?

I've had this problem, too, with the backlight on with tilt switch and sound off. Sucks knowing the customer has to change it all the time - so I'm also going to spec rechareables with an M2. What does everyone thing about the RTI quality control recently?