My husband has wanted to do away with our coffee table full of remotes for quite some time and we have bought a few “all in one” remotes over the years but never could get them to work correctly, and eventually gave up. So when I got the chance to test a Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote Control I was excited, but skeptical. But after putting it through the paces, I have to say the Logitech Harmony One Remote Control is one cool gadget!
You can truly put all your other remotes away and use one single remote control in the place of up to 15 separate remote controls. We were able to put away all our remotes for the TV, VCR, DVD, cable box, Wii, Playstation 2, and various home entertainment stereo surround sound components. The device database that the Logitech Harmony One Remote is compatible with includes is huge and contains over 5000 brands and 225,000 models and includes devices from the past 20 years. They also update their device database daily so your remote will continue to work with any new electronics you buy in the future.
Having all of those brands and models to choose from is great because you can be fairly confident your electronic equipment will be in the list. On the other hand, there are so many to choose from and so many sub categories that having all of the choices and models are a bit confusing in some instances because you aren’t sure if you’re picking the correct one, especially when choosing the home theatre surround system components. We didn’t have too much trouble with any of the other devices, but the home theatre components were a bit tricky.
The Logitech Harmony One Remote works with any device that has an infrared remote control such as your TV, VCR, DVD, DVR, PVR, receiver, amplifier, stereo components, computers, and surround sound equipment. The one drawback I found was that it does not work with infrared technology such as my Wii game system. The remote will change my TV mode to Video2 so I can play the game, but will not power on the Wii system itself.
The remote itself is much lighter and slimmer than I imagined it would be, and the buttons are large and easy to read and use. I love the colored brightly lit touch screen! The colors are bold and the lettering is easy to read and the icons are easy to understand. You can also download different skins if you want to put your own custom look and feel to the screen.
The touchpad itself is very sensitive and quick to respond to your commands, and I found that it was a bit too sensitive and had to lower the sensitivity a couple of notches. My husband was still having problems with the touchpad because he wants to “mash” the screen and I keep telling him to use a light quick touch … but he’s a man and not very delicate so he had a bit of a learning curve. He finally mastered it though!
Overall the touchpad is very user friendly and all the other buttons and action are very easy to understand and customize to suit your taste. I also like that the remote runs on a lithium ion battery and comes with a docking station for charging, so you don’t have to worry about replacing batteries. A 5 hour charge has been lasting about one week before we have to recharge the remote again.
Setting up the remote for use the first time is easy and automated, but is a bit tedious. You have to gather up all of the names and model numbers of the devices you want to control with the Logitech Harmony One Remote. We grumbled and complained the entire time we were digging through our stack of user manuals and paperwork to find the model numbers for all of our devices we wanted to control. But it was well worth the time spent gathering the info once we saw the Logitech Harmony One Remote in action!
After gathering all your device names and model number, you’ll need to load the software that comes with the remote onto your computer. Then simply follow the direction that pop up and go online and create an account at the Logitech website. After you create your account you can start entering in your device information into your control center. The layout of the control center is very easy to follow and amazingly intuitive.
After entering in the names and model numbers of all your devices, you’ll choose the activities you want the Logitech Harmony One Remote to perform for you on each device. Let’s say you have a cable TV with a cable box and a surround sound system you use when you watch your television. You would program so that when you push the “Watch TV” button on your Logitech Harmony One Remote touch screen, it will turn on your television, set the television to the correct channel or mode, turn on your cable box, and turn on your surround sound system and set it to the correct mode. Then let’s say you want to quit watching TV and just listen to music on your surround sound system. You would program the “Listen to Music” button on the touch screen to turn off the television, turn off the cable box if you choose to do so, leave the surround sound system on but switch modes to whatever mode you use to listen to music. It might sound a bit complicated at first, but it’s really easy and the setup screens guide you along the way. Once you’ve set everything up, the Logitech Harmony One Remote makes it simple to switch between watching TV, watching a movie, listening to music, or playing a video game. You simply push one button and the remote turns on the required equipment and turns off any unnecessary equipment. All with one remote, with one button!
After setting everything up the way you want you then plug the remote into the USB cable and into your computer and sync them up so the information can be downloaded to your remote control. Then you can test each function. If something doesn’t work correctly, you simply go back to your computer and access your account and tweak the settings and then download the changes to the remote via the USB connection. I’ll confess that I had to sync, tweak, and upload changes about 5 times … and never could quite get all my bells and whistles to work … so it was time to call the experts.
The Logitech website offers online assistance and their toll free technical support lines are available Monday-Friday 9:00am ET-10:00pm ET, Saturday-Sunday 10:00am ET-5:30pm ET. I admit I had to call customer service to get mine working completely. I was not impressed with the wait time trying to get through to them on their toll free tech support number. The first time I called I waited on hold for 30 minutes and finally gave up. The next time I called I waited on hold for 45 minutes and gave up. The next day I decided to give them one more try and waited for about 10 minutes and finally got to talk to a real live English speaking technical support person who was genuinely nice and extremely knowledgeable about the product. Her name was Nicole and she patiently walked me through a series of steps and had me completely up and running in about 20 minutes time. I was very impressed with her enthusiasm for the product and customer service skills.
In summary, it takes a bit of time up front to gather all your device information and set everything up correctly, and you have to list each activity in the correct sequence of turning on or turning off each device, but once you get it all set up you’ll be completely amazed and totally in love with your new Logitech Harmony One Remote! The cost is about $250.00 retail.
All in all, I give it 4 out of 5 stars. I would give it 5 stars if it worked with my Wii.
