Best remote for everything is a Harmony except for voice

The cheap FireStick remote works great ($15 directly from Amazon), just hold the HOME button on it for 5 seconds to get it into pairing mode and then on your Shield search for a bluetooth device. It does tend to chew through batteries. I usually get a month out of a pair of triple A batteries.

The 2nd gen FireTV voice remote used to work, but apparently as of the last 2 firmware updates it no longer does.

I have also learned today that plugging in a USB microphone to the Shield will cause it to use that as the voice search input. I am going to try this tonight.

Glad I'm not the only one who's not happy with the remote. The volume slider is maddening. Slide it one millimeter up and the volume flies all the way to the top. So hard to just go one notch up.

I had the same experience you did. I started off using my fire stick remote but wanted the added functionality of voice so I purchased the Shield remote. I had it for a day and it was awful. I returned it and went back to my fire stick remote. The only thing its missing is voice, but I can live without it.

could just use an ir tv remote. if your shield doesn't have an ir receiver (the newer shield), add a flirc usb. (this is assuming your system can't just be controlled with CEC, or you want more controls than it passes)

for voice, i use a usb mic in my ATV unit itself. it's a bit far, but it can usually hear me fine.

alternatively you'd want that rf air mouse gyro remote that's like 20 bucks and has a mic in the unit (for 'near' listening), full qwerty, all that. proprietary rf usb dongle, it shouldn't have quite the same sleeping problems and still keeps the in-remote mic.

I use a Minix NEO A2 Lite remote. It requires a USB dongle, but it has dedicated play control buttons as well as an "air mouse" feature that gives you a mouse cursor on screen.

Honestly, I like the speed and responsiveness of the shield remote but it is definitely lacking and is not intuitive for my wife and kids.

I spent last night getting the Flirc setup with it. One thing that took me a bit to grasp was that the Flirc takes your existing remote, whatever it is, and maps it to commands that the Shield can use. i.e. You can take your existing TV remote and map the directional/select on the TV controller to the same directional/select that the Shield would use. I also went in and mapped keys on my remote to Kodi commands such as play/pause/ff/rew, etc. One issue that I had with it is that even though it can learn all commands, some work much better than the other.

For reference, I also paired it with this cheap learning remote that shockingly works well, is a good price, but you need to pay attention to the instructions. Unlike the Harmony, you program it manually but it didn't take too long for me. Inteset INT-422

Again, just my take on it. Everyone is different but it definitely satisfied the WAF for now.

I did not expect much from it considering the price, but I'm surprisingly happy with this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multifunctional-Wireless-Keyboard-Dupad-Story/dp/B01IVJH0IG/
It does everything I expected it to do, no complaints what so ever. I RMA'd my shield remote twice due to "phantom" inputs, and the third one still had issues. Having a video pause by itself, or the volume change while being nowhere near the remote isn't what I expect from an official product...

try to unplug it and plug it back after 20 seconds

Damn remote. Super expensive for what it is and my (non replaceable) battery died after 1 year.