First of all I want to start by saying that my review is of the fob itself, not Meso's customer service. If I was rating their customer service it would easily be a five star review.

My wife has an oem flip fob for her German-made car and I really wanted on because I absolutely *hate* the OEM 4Runner fob with a passion. When I discovered this flip fob from Meso I was so excited to get it. I have all of Meso's interior lights for my 4Runner and I absolutely love them - I couldn't be happier with them. The flip fob on the other hand - I hate to say it, is a waste of a lot of money. Not only is the fob expensive by itself, but you have to cannibalize the OEM fob that costs $250 plus another $200 in labor that a dealership will charge you to copy that OEM fob. So obviously I was ok with destroying my $450 OEM fob for a chance of owning a better option than what Toyota came up with for their 4Runner fob design.

So I purchased my flip fob in mid-September through another site - presumably because Meso was out of stock and I really wanted it. Within four months had failed me so many times that I contacted Meso for the first time to ask if I could purchase the spring that makes the key flip out. As I stated earlier, this was not the first failure of the fob, it was just the first failure that I wasn't able to repair it myself...

So, the fob is *so* absolutely fragile that if you drop your keys there's a really good chance the flip will stop flipping. Seriously. It may only flip out a quarter of an inch, it may only flip out half way and you'll have to manually move the key to the open position, or it may not flip out at all - making your ignition key inaccessible. so you better hope you have access to a spare key that operates the engine - especially if you're away from home! The only way to fix it is to disassemble the fob completely without losing any of the internal parts, reseat all the parts in the correct locations, and reassemble the fob. easy right!?! ...until the next time you drop your keys, or it simply decides to stop working.

So before I contacted Meso four months into my ownership of this fob, I had probably repaired the fob four or five times. I was okay with that because the OEM fob sucks. Then on the last time I notice that the flipper spring was mangled beyond repair so I reached out to Meso. They were great! Without hesitation they sent me what I thought was the replacement spring, but turned out to be an entire kit of parts - for the wrong vehicle! An easy mistake, and not a big deal. I reached out to them again and they sent me again what I thought was a spring, but this time it was an entire new fob kit! Amazing customer service!

I had the new key blank cut by a locksmith and installed it in my existing fob body... That lasted a few more weeks until I noticed the top half of fob body was cracked and causing the fob to not function properly. No problem because Meso sent me an entire new kit right??? It was a different color, but I didn't care. I also didn't want to deal with carving out the transponder so I swapped the top part of the body with the one from the new kit. Now I had a fob that was green on the bottom and white on top. Didn't care. It functioned - until it didn't...

Two days ago the fully-functioning fob just simply decided to start flipping only halfway out. Well, here we go again.... Before I could take it apart, this morning on my way in to work(I'm a driver for a brown delivery company and we're constantly juggling a lot of things in our hands while going through security checkpoints and other daily business) I dropped my keys on the ground and the fob decided it was going to stop flipping all together. It wasn't even going to tease me with even a little bit of access to the key. Luckily I have a spare ignition key hidden in my vehicle or else I wouldn't have been able to start my truck without using brute force to pull the key out of the fob.

So with that, six months into this journey, I'm over it. I'm switching back to the dark side and going back to the OEM fob that's going to poke me in the leg, annoy me all the time, and make me wonder if I'm pressing the correct button for lock and unlock. I'm very disappointed, but at least I gave i a shot and now I know.

Failure points...
- Dropping your keys there's a very good chance it'll stop doing the thing it's supposed to.
- it may decide on its own that it wants to stop doing the thing its supposed to - flipping.
- the key itself may become loose, and even Loctite on the set screw will only last so long. I even drilled a hole through the head of the key and screwed a tiny bolt into it to hold it in place.
- Fob body is weak and may crack easily.
- minor fabrications are required in all aspects of assembling this fob, as well as repairing i after failures.

My heart breaks that this flip fob didn't work out....

Well, it works. I won't say it's easy to put together, but it works. It's a high-quality fob and I like the feel of it, but there are a lot of things I'd refine. These are all minor complaints, but they're the types of things UX designers know to design for:

For starters, let's talk about the design of the flip mechanism. Due to the way the mechanism rotates, the key ends up 90 degrees out of plane from the fob. This means that when you turn the key in the ignition, you have to rotate your hand unnaturally far to start the car. If it were in-plane, it would make starting the car easier.

And the button for actually flipping the key: while the key flips out very smoothly, it only works if you press and depress the button. The friction of your thumb on the button is enough to stop the rotation. An additional thin sleeve over the top (perhaps a chrome plastic) would be enough to prevent this.

And the method for locking the spring in place when you have to disassemble it is exceptionally difficult, Given how long the locking pin is, it also makes it nigh on impossible to get the key cut without first assembling the entire fob. So you have to be willing to irreversibly ruin your existing key before cutting the new one. I'd recommend using the included small hex key to remove the blank and get it cut ahead of time to avoid having to disassemble/reassemble the fob.

Next: the buttons. The easy one would be to say "make the panic button red." It is a different shape and location, but it's pretty standard to make that a red button so it's easy to identify at a glance. This is especially important given its similar size and shape to the blank above it.

However, the biggest issue is how similar the lock and unlock buttons are. They're the same size, same shape, and the icons look and feel almost identical. That's not a problem in broad daylight while you're looking at the fob, but they're hard to distinguish if you're in the dark or trying to lock the car as you put the key away in your pocket. This is where coloring the lock and unlock icons would be helpful, or even better, making them flat icons and putting raised bumps on the lock buttons would provide easy orientation. You could know that just pressing the button with the bumps would lock the car.

Again, It's a good product. It feels solid and I like the form factor and the way it fits in my pocket much more than the standard Toyota key, but there is definitely room for improvement.

I just wanted to make s review on my previous purchase of this flip key fob. I purchased this back in September of 2021.

I decided to write a review now because after nearly 3 and a half years I finally broke the 3d printed case. I gotta say that is good quality. I have run over, dropped, lost, and really beat this key fob up. Only just today have I needed to get a new one. Meso always has great quality products.

Defective and doesn’t respond to emails to get warrantied.