Best Smartphones With IR Blasters for Remote Control

As of 2026, the best smartphones with IR blasters are still Xiaomi’s: the Xiaomi 15 is the best overall pick, the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ is the best value, and the Poco X7 Pro is the best gaming-first option that keeps the emitter. No current Apple, Samsung or Google flagship ships one, so if you live in North America — where Xiaomi doesn’t officially sell phones — the practical answer is usually a $15–$30 USB-C or Bluetooth IR dongle rather than a new handset.

Quick comparison: IR blaster phones worth buying

Best overall: Xiaomi 15

The Xiaomi 15 is the only phone that combines a genuine flagship chip, a full-size battery and a top-edge IR emitter in one device. The emitter sits next to the microphone grille, and Xiaomi’s built-in remote app ships with a large offline code database, so TV, soundbar and air-conditioner codes keep working with no network connection. The trade-off is availability: Xiaomi does not sell phones officially in the United States, and grey imports can miss North American LTE/5G bands and carrier VoLTE whitelists, so check band support before ordering.

Best value: Redmi Note 14 Pro+

Redmi’s Note line has carried an IR blaster for years, and the Note 14 Pro+ keeps it while adding 120 W charging — the fastest in this group. It suits someone who mainly wants a reliable TV and AC remote plus a good screen and battery, and who doesn’t need flagship frame rates. The trade-off is the chip: Snapdragon 7s Gen 3-class silicon handles everyday gaming at medium settings but throttles under long sessions.

Best for gaming: Poco X7 Pro

Poco’s mid-range phones are the value-gaming sweet spot, and the X7 Pro pairs a Dimensity 8400-Ultra with a ~6,000 mAh battery and the same IR emitter. In published reviews, this class of silicon holds 60 fps in demanding titles at medium-to-high settings and reaches the higher frame-rate modes in shooters, though sustained frame rates vary with resolution, in-game settings, ambient temperature and game patch. Its main trade-off versus a true flagship is camera quality and peak sustained performance after 20–30 minutes of play.

Best camera plus IR: Xiaomi 15 Ultra

If photography comes first and the IR blaster is a bonus, the Ultra tier is the answer — but verify the regional spec sheet, because Xiaomi has historically varied the top-edge hardware between China and global SKUs. Assume nothing from a listing photo; check the manufacturer’s own regional page or the device’s top edge in person.

What an IR blaster can and can’t control

The key limitation most buyers discover too late: phone IR blasters are transmit-only. There is no IR receiver behind that dark window, so you cannot “learn” an unknown remote by pointing it at your phone. Every code has to come from the app’s database or be entered manually.

What works well: TVs, soundbars, AV receivers, projectors, set-top boxes, air conditioners, fans, and even Xbox consoles, which include an IR receiver for media remotes and power commands. What doesn’t: the PlayStation 5 (HDMI-CEC and Bluetooth only), the Nintendo Switch, Bluetooth-only soundbars, and streaming sticks — a Roku Streaming Stick or Fire TV Stick remote is Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and the phone can’t pair as a replacement.

How far it reaches — and why your air conditioner is the hard case

Expect reliable line-of-sight control at roughly 5–8 m in a normal room; in a dark room with a clean line to the receiver, 10 m is achievable. Direct sunlight is the enemy, because sunlight is full of infrared: range in a sunlit room can collapse to 1–2 m. You don’t need a perfect angle — IR bounces off light-coloured walls — but a bounce roughly halves usable range, so aim at the receiver when you can.

Air conditioners are the failure case because they don’t send simple button codes. They transmit a full state dump — often well over 100 bits, taking 100–250 ms per press — encoding power, mode, temperature, fan speed and swing. If an app’s protocol table is slightly wrong, the unit powers on at the wrong temperature or in the wrong mode, which is why “my AC turns on but at 18 °C” is the single most common complaint. Test your AC through the app before you retire the original remote.

Also check the physical layout: the emitter lives on the top edge, so a full-coverage case, a pop-socket or a phone grip can cover it. Point the top of the phone, not the screen, at the appliance.

The battery math nobody does

People avoid IR blasters fearing battery drain. Here’s the actual arithmetic for one NEC keypress: the frame is 67.5 ms long (a 9 ms leader burst, a 4.5 ms gap, then 32 bits averaging 1.6875 ms each). Only about 31.5 ms of that frame is carrier-on time. A phone IR LED peaks near 120 mA at a one-third duty cycle, so average current during a burst is about 40 mA, and across the whole frame it averages roughly 19 mA. That’s 19 mA × 0.0675 s ≈ 1.3 mA·s, or about 0.0004 mAh per keypress. Five hundred presses in an evening costs roughly 0.2 mAh — about 0.004% of a 5,000 mAh battery.

Now the screen. A 6.7-inch AMOLED at moderate brightness draws roughly 0.7–1.5 W, which at ~3.85 V is about 180–390 mA, so five minutes of screen-on time costs roughly 15–33 mAh — 75 to 150 times more than 500 IR keypresses. The lesson: choose a phone for its chip, screen and app support, not for imagined IR battery drain. What actually drains the battery is leaving the remote app open with the display on.

Apps and software support: the real long-term risk

• Built-in Xiaomi remote app: the best coverage for Xiaomi TVs, ACs and set-top boxes, works offline once codes are cached, and has no ad layer.
• Third-party apps (ZaZa Remote, Sure Universal Remote, ASmart Remote IR and similar): broader brand coverage, but many are ad-supported and some haven’t been meaningfully updated in years.
• Android API: apps transmit through the ConsumerIrManager interface. Google replaced the older IR API back in Android 5.0, and a future deprecation or a vendor dropping the driver would break every app at once — which is why an app that still gets updates matters more than a long device list.
• Day-one test: set up your TV, soundbar and AC in the first week, and keep the original remotes in a drawer.

Gaming performance: what actually matters

No game uses the IR blaster, so treat it as a bonus rather than a spec. What matters is the chip behind it. Snapdragon 8 Elite-class phones such as the Xiaomi 15 hold 60 fps in demanding titles at high settings and reach the 120 fps modes that games like Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG Mobile expose at reduced settings. Dimensity 8400-Ultra-class phones like the Poco X7 Pro generally run the same titles at 60 fps on medium-to-high settings and dip into the 40s–50s under sustained load. All figures are approximate ranges typical of published reviews and vary with resolution, settings, ambient temperature, CPU/GPU governor behaviour and game patch.

Where IR genuinely helps a gaming setup: switching TV inputs on a docked phone, controlling a projector for a big-screen session, and — usefully — dropping the air-conditioner temperature before a long session. Cooler ambient air reduces thermal throttling, which is the single biggest cause of frame-rate decay after 20 minutes.

Which one should you buy?

Frequently Asked Questions

Which phone brands still include an IR blaster in 2026?

Xiaomi is the only major brand that still puts an emitter on most of its phones, including Redmi and Poco models. Honor and Huawei have shipped IR on select China-market models, and a handful of rugged Android handsets include one, but Apple, Samsung and Google have not shipped an IR blaster on a flagship for years.

Can a phone with an IR blaster learn codes from my old remote?

No. Phone IR blasters are transmit-only — there’s no receiver behind the window — so codes must come from the app’s database or be typed in manually. If your appliance is a rare brand, check that the app lists it before buying the phone.

Why doesn’t my phone control my air conditioner properly?

Air conditioners send a full state dump of 100+ bits per press rather than simple button codes, so a slightly inaccurate protocol table produces the right power state with the wrong mode or temperature. Try alternative code sets for the same brand in the app, and re-test before retiring the original remote.

Do IR blaster phones work in the United States?

Not officially — Xiaomi doesn’t sell phones there, so any IR-capable handset is