Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote with Color Touch Screen
by Logitech
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote with Color Touch Screen
Customer Review: Skeptic at first - fan for life.
Summary: 5 Stars
My wife first suggested the idea of getting a universal remote. Her exact words were "I don't watch TV when you're out of town on business, because I don't know how." She offered to buy me this remote for my birthday, but I declined (in hopes of getting something better.)
A few weeks later, I caved, and bought the remote for her, just before I had another business trip planned.
Being used to Tivo's remote for the last handful of years, I was a bit scared to give up that level of comfort (both in functionality, and look/feel.) I was surprised when I took the Harmony One out of the package, and compared the two. The remote is similar in weight and feel to the Tivo remote.
I came into my office, installed the software that came with the Harmony One. It worked on my Vista Home Premium 64-bit, with no issues.
The software is brilliant. My last universal remote (Philips Pronto Neo, years and years ago) was a nightmare to program. The Harmony One was so easy. You simply tell the remote the model numbers of your gear (most of which are right on the front of the device itself.), and it goes out to the internet and finds the codes for you device for you.
Once your devices are programmed, you can set up psuedo-macro commands. You tell the remote what devices you need for specific functions. ie; when I watch TV, my TV goes on Input 1, my Tivo goes on, my receiver goes on Input 2. I'm not sure what the number of "Activities" you can set is, but I've got 4 set up. (Watch TV, Watch DVD, Watch HD DVD, and Play XBox360.) When you want to do one of those things, you just press the button on the touch screen. The remote does all the hard work for you.
The only downfall that I've found with the remote is that it doesn't control Bluetooth devices. So no Wii or PS3 being controlled by the remote. There are Bluetooth to IR adaptors that will make the remote work with those devices, but I've yet to try it.
If you're skeptical (as I was, at first) about universal remotes, this is the remote for you. Easy to program, and easy to use. The battery is rechargable, and it comes with a dock that does the charging. This makes it virtually impossible to have dead batteries in your remote.
The remote is so easy, my wife can watch TV and even DVDs when I'm not home. That says something about the effectiveness of the Harmony One remote. Absolutely worth the money. And, at last check, it's $75 cheaper on Amazon than it is at Best Buy.
Customer Review: Best I have used
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had one of these since they were first introduced - maybe 2+ years now. The most recent purchase is as a gift for a family member. I find the whole lineup of Logitech remotes (we have 3 different ones in use for different locations) to be a great combination of simplicity and sophistication. Not only do these remotes have the ability to support any past, present or future IR controlled device thru the Logitech database, I found the support people very willing to create special commands or macros that may not be available in the database or that exceed the capability of the remotes own user programming. For instance when I used an inexpensive IR-USB remote to control the DVD player function of our PS3, the only way to power the unit off remotely was to move the PS3 on screen cursor several "left" and "up" directions with the pointer control, then select the power off icon and confirm it. The One would not directly accept a macro from me to do this but the Logitech folks were happy to create one and down load it to my personal database. Changing devices as we have upgraded our entertainment system has been easy, as has been the ability to create special buttons, including ones using commercial logos for network and local TV channels. The family really appreciates the "Activities" based use as that eliminates the need to know how each device in the theater needs to be set to watch TV or a DVD. My elderly mother uses one with her own home theater and has found the "Help" to be invaluable to her (and to me since I am 1500 miles away) to straighten out the configuration for a desired activity when something doesnt come up as expected. Her own entertainment system is fairly complicated and she is not very tech savy but over the last year since she got her remote she has been able to solve any setup issue that occurred just using "Help".
If there is a downside to this product it is that its power and simplicity are largely dependent on the person that sets it up. One needs to spend a good bit of time setting up each device and how it (the device controls) maps to the activities in order to get the most from the remote. This can take several iterations of making changes to the remote on your PC and trying these things on your own entertainment system. While the Logitech device database is pretty complete and the software will lead you thru creating activities, if you use just the default settings for everything the results can leave you searching for controls and in some cases with confusing button functions.
Customer Review: So Simple Even My Wife Can Use It
Summary: 5 Stars
Love it, Love it, Love it.
This is a great remote control; from its ultra-simple online guided set-up, to its ergonomic design, to actually using it.
Set-Up: As simple as selecting what brands you own that you need to control, and then entering the model number. From there, just tell it what you want to do. The interface is "activity" driven, not device. For example, if you want to set it up to watch a DVD, the Harmony One will ask you what needs to happen and it will do the rest. For example, which input your receiver should be set to. You don't need to input command by command macros--the Harmony One does it for you!
Interface: I used to have a Philips Pronto Remote, and hated having to go from screen to screen to access the command you needed--very tedious. Bottomline--hard buttons are more user friendly. The Harmony One has plenty of hard buttons, but not too many. Some other Harmony remotes are overloaded with buttons that are too small. The Harmony One has just the right amount for what you will normally need. When there is that one "other" function that is used sometimes, but not too often, the LCD will include it.
Usage: I'm not being sexist when I say "even my wife can use it". She hated my Pronto. As I was setting this remote up, I knew my wife would like it. Once set-up was complete (and I made sure it was functioning as it should), I handed the remote to my wife with all of the components turned off. I asked her to watch TV. She was instantly able to understand that all she had to do was push the "Watch TV" button on the LCD. She did, the TV turned on, and switched to the correct input(Componenet 1). The UP/Down Channel buttons controlled our TIVO, as they should, and the volume buttons controlled the TV volume. I then asked her to watch a DVD. She touched the "Watch a DVD" button, and our BluRay player turned on, the TV switched to the HDMI input, and the AV receiver powered up and switched to the DVD input. The Volume buttons on the remote now controlled the AV receiver, not the TV--perfect. One other very cool thing happened--the LCD screen on the remote switched to BluRay, and offered an Eject button. We pushed the button and the disc door opened. When we were done, all my wife had to do was push a single "Off" button, and everything powered down, except for the TIVO, which we were given the option to keep on during set-up. Brilliant.
As I said earlier, this is a great remote. I highly recommend it.
Customer Review: Taking control of your super interconnected multimedia machines!
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I have never owned a universal remote before I got the Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote, so using an advanced universal remote control was a new and exciting experience for me.
Setting up the remote was easy. The remote comes with computer software, which makes it easy to set everything up. You enter in the brand and model number of all your devices, and the software downloads the necessary remote control codes from an online database, which is continually updated. The setup takes generally 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how complicated your multimedia system is. All this information is loaded onto the remote by an included USB cable.
When configuring the remote, you can enter different activities, such as "Watch TV," "Play a DVD," etc. When you select an activity, the remote will turn on/off devices, change channels, or whatever it needs to do to set everything up for that activity, with one press of a button. It was a little tricky getting everything working together just right, but it just takes a little tweaking to make everything work together correctly. The setup guide is overall very user friendly.
The remote feels very comfortable in my hand, no matter how far up I hold it. There is a touch screen at the top, which, among other things, lets you use any function of your remote that is not represented by an actual button on the lower part of the remote. My favorite part of the remote is that you can create customized buttons on the touch screen for your favorite channels. The touch screen has a built in help feature, but really isn't necessary since the remote is very intuitive to use.
Also, I like how the touch screen and lighted buttons "wake up" just by slightly shaking the remote, so you don't have to press a button first to see the remote light up in the dark. The remote has a built in rechargeable battery, and comes with a charger base, which provides a good place to keep the remote (rather than stuck under the couch cushions!).
The only flaw I can think of is the remote does not work for RF devices, which is disappointing for an "advanced" remote control such as this. Overall, this remote is the perfect accessory for someone who has too many remote controls to manage.
Customer Review: Another satisfied customer
Summary: 5 Stars
Add me to the list of satisfied customers of this Logitech remote control solution.
I just added a new Samsung HT-BD1250 home theater (HTIB) system to my existing configuration of a 2-year-old Samsung HD TV and Motorola HD/DVR box supplied from my cable company, and decided with the addition of the HTIB that I was finally ready to have a single-remote solution. This unit came highly recommended to me by a trusted friend, and then the many reviews I read here and elsewhere on-line solidified my purchase decision.
My existing TV and cable box were already in Logitech's database, so their configuration to my new remote was instantaneous and complete. My new HTIB system, however, is a brand-newly released model, and so while the Logitech software was able to configure it to the remote as closely as it could based on other info already on-hand about previous Samsung HTIBs, the configuration of all the functions was still incomplete. It took me 1 phone call to Logitech's excellent fluent-English-speaking tech support to help me "fill in the blanks", and then after I "taught" the remote the missing features button-by-button, I was good to go.
As others have documented, I have also found the PC-based software to be a little bit intuitively lacking (and I make my living as a software professional; I could definitely see non-technical users being even less patient with it), but the functionality *is* in there once you learn the quirks of the software.
At the time I have written this review, there were already several hundred reviews in place here, the majority of which were overwhelmingly positive like mine. However, many of the negative ones were "vehemently" negative. I believe that these extremely negative reviews are for the most part the result of either (a) unrealistic product expectations, and/or (b) lack of user patience to fully learn and exploit the complete feature set of the product. As others have documented, with literally thousands of combinations of old and new remote-controlled products on the market, it is impossible to release a "plug and play, works immediately right out of the box" universal remote control product. This product comes as close to, or closer than, any other product in attempting to do so...but it's still a technical product/solution, and requires some technical effort to truly get it to work the way any given user would desire or require. Going in with any other expectation is setting the user up for disappointment.