brianlilly
San Francisco, CA

One remote to rule them all

5 star rating

loving this product, movie buff, simple is good
Pros

    easy setup, looks great

Cons
    pricey

FEB
21
2008

After years of suffering with 5 remotes on my living room table I finally decided to get a universal remote. The Harmony One remote is a new addition to the Logitech lineup and as such has most of the best features of previous models. The main feature it lacks is RF capability, but I wasn't interested in that anyways.

My preference in remotes is for something that I fits well in my hand and that I can find the right button by touch. For that reason I wasn't interested in any of the flat/wide remotes with large touchscreens (but few buttons). The form factor of the Harmony One is exactly what I was looking for--about the size of a normal dvd player remote--with buttons for play, pause, enter, volume, channel, etc reasonably laid out. As a bonus this remote has a motion sensor that turns on a backlight, so even if you aren't familar with the remote there's no problem using it in a dark room. The backlight lights up both the touch LCD near the top as well as all the individual buttons.

Next on my list of requirements was something that would be easy to program and support macros. I've had remotes before that you had to train each keypress for each remote you wanted it to emulate. That's not very user friendly. The Logitech remote comes with software that can be installed on a PC or Mac. The software asks for the model numbers of all the components you want to use. Logitech has a huge database online, the only problem I had was trying to figure out what to call my iPod dock with remote, since it wasn't obvious which category it fell into. The software walked me though it and figured it out. After chosing your compnents, it helps you set up "Activities", things like "Watch a DVD" or "Listen to music". The great thing about activites is that you can press 1 button on the remote and since it understands all your devices it will send the right remote codes to say turn on the TV, set the TV input to component in, turn on the Receiver, set the Reciever to DVD in, and turn on the DVD player. While watching a DVD, the play/pause/fwd/rev buttons get sent to the DVD player, Aspect to the TV, volume up/down to the reciever.

Once all the activities are set up you can plug the remote into your computer via the provided USB cable and download all the settings to it. I only had one problem after the initial setup, which was that pressing Eject while in the "Watch a DVD" activity didn't do anything. The software helped troubleshoot the problem by learning the right Eject code from my existing DVD remote. Overall, the setup took me just 30 minutes.

If you ever add or remove devices, you can just go back into the software and reprogram the remote. I haven't had to do that yet, but based on my initial experience have hopes that it will be painless.

The look of the remote is really nice too. The touch LCD screen is bright and has vibrant colors, and the black case gives it a real sleak look.

Finally, the remote comes with a basestation to recharge its battery. So you'll never need to rummage around for batteries.

The only real complaint I have is the price, it's not exactly a cheap toy.

Overall, I absolutely love the Logitech Harmony One remote. It was easy to set up, has great features and looks, and cleared up a lot of clutter in my living room.

Last edited on Feb 21, 2008



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I_comment_shdw24 Comments about brianlilly’s Review

 


brianlilly wrote on Feb 22, 2008 at 10:47AM

In response to kevin's comment from Feb 21, 2008 at 5:13PM:

When you select one of the Activities, a little message pops up saying something like "keep the remote pointed at your system". It then proceeds to cycle through each device and issue the appropriate commands. I haven't noticed any problems with commands failing to register with different components, all devices have always turned on/off or responded to the button I pressed the first time. And I am just keeping it generally pointed in the direction of my setup, not at any specific portion of it.

Strangely, it seems like it spaces out the commands a little bit, so overall it takes a little more time to get everything started than I used to when I was controlling multiple remotes myself. But that's a small price to pay for the simplicity.

I have had problems with my old remotes that you really had to point them at the right place when the batteries are low. But with fresh batteries I've found you can bounce the signal off the ceiling or rear wall and the components still pick it up.

kevin wrote on Feb 21, 2008 at 5:13PM

Nice and thorough review. That motion sensor feature sounds ideal. The only question I have is how well does it work turning on the TV, DVD, etc? Specifically since you might have to aim the remote at each one? I always seem to have problems with that on my normal remotes.

Meredith wrote on Feb 21, 2008 at 4:20PM

Nice review. Nice to have you back reviewing again too!

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