I hate the remote control. OG Chromecast you just used your phone or computer to control everything. You could turn volume up or down which doesn't fucking work on the new gen w/o the remote bc it relies on actually changing the volume setting on the TV itself whereas the old one just lowered the volume being transmitted from the device to the TV. The whole platform has been enshitified. There was no way to cram ads into the old Chromecast so they decided to make it be a shitty smart TV type dongle that you need to log into every app on to make functionality even work where before the login was just on your phone. Now if a guest is over, they can't even cast because they are signed in on a different account. Everything is worse on the new Chromecast, but hey, my boomer mom loves having a remote now.