Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote Control
by Logitech
|
Our Price: $175.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $70.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote Control
Customer Review: The best Universal Remote and here's why:
Summary: 5 Stars
I have researched and purchased several universal remotes and have not been happy with any of them until now. The only warning I have is that this remote is not for the technologically unsavvy as you must set up the functions of this remote on a computer, then download the settings to the remote. If this sounds ominous to you, be assured that the program to set it up is user-friendly and easy to navigate. You can download the remote settings with one click of a button.
1. Smart design: the buttons are ergonomically placed. The bottom of the remote has raised numbers for channel changing. The mute and prev (previous channel) button are well placed and for the night owls, all the buttons glow for late-night channel surfing.
2. Incredibly well-thought-out utility: The remote has an "Activities" button that lets you choose which activity you want and sets up your home entertainment system for it. EXAMPLE - I want to play Xbox 360. Before I bought this remote, I would have to turn on the Xbox, turn on the TV and set it to AV1, turn on the receiver and set it to Video 1 (for stereo sound), turn off the cable box or any other peripheral device.) Once programmed, the remote does ALL of this for me, I just grab the controller and Halo3 is already loaded up.
You can set up custom activities or fill in the settings for standard ones such as Watch a DVD, Watch TV, Listen to Radio, Listen to CDs, etc. Once the remote knows what to turn on and for what purpose, it does it with one click of a button.
Even if you want to switch from one activity to another, the remote will change the settings from Play Xbox to Watch TV in one press of a button. The remote is smart and figures out what it needs to change in order to change the activity. If for some reason, one component misses the signal from the remote, you just press the "help" button on the remote and it walk you through a brief series of steps to correct the problem.
3. Just punch in the model number of your component and it downloads the settings! EXAMPLE - when setting up the remote, it asks for the make and model of your home entertainment components. I punched in my TV's make and model number and it automatically downloaded everything it needed to know about the remote functions. It knew all of the TV's functions. Plug and play. This is true for all of the components of my entertainment system, and I have components from all different manufacturers.
4. Yes, it will work with your cable box and the menu settings if your cable box has a recording function - like TIVO.
5. No, it will not work with devices that use blue-tooth technology for remote control. EX: Wii and PS3 use bluetooth for their remote control functions and cannot be controlled by the Harmony. I GUESS I can actually walk UP and turn those two devices on or scramble for their remotes...
6. "Devices" button permits you to switch from device to device and enter custom commands.
7. Surprisingly light-weight and smaller than most universal remotes. I was actually quite surprised by its small size and weight. Good show Logitech!
After giving multiple universal remotes a test drive, I was highly impressed and satisfied with this one.
$Money saving tip: though the listed price is in the $75 range, I got this remote for $49.99! Here's the trick: place the remote in your shopping cart then "save for later." Each time you view your shopping cart, amazon alerts you to price increases or decreases for items in the cart. When I saw the price had been reduced by $25, I jumped all over it. After a day, however, the price jumped back up to $75. I would easily pay $75 or more for this remote but getting it for 65% off retail was icing on the cake.
Happy couch-potato-ing!
Customer Review: A Love / Hate Relationship
Summary: 4 Stars
Summary:
A great remote, but one that may take many hours of your time to set up
Pros:
- Good ergonomics
- Nice tactile feel on buttons
- Highly configurable
- Seems to put out a strong signal (better then my factory remotes)
- Non-rechargable (I consider this a plus)
Cons:
- Setup is easy, but getting it right can take hours
- Not easy to map device buttons to activity buttons
- No dedicated "decimal point" for tuning digital stations
- Remote selection during setup doesn't allow you to pick from a list
I'll preface this short review by saying that I manage a group at work tasked with making human / computer interfaces work well. So I have a decent amount of experience in this area (but I'm also picky - caveat emptor). Having said that, I found that Logitech tried very hard to get things right, but are still missing the mark in a few areas.
I started by not installing the Logitech software from the disk (based on suggestions I had read here), but instead downloaded the software from the Logitech site. No installation problems, and my firewall software recognized and allowed the Logitech software to pass through without incident. I plugged the 550 into a USB port and XP recognized it and I was transported to the Logitech setup software. Good start.
The first part where I had issue was in telling the software what devices I had. You have to type in the name of your model numbers after selecting the manufacturer, and there is no real indication as to whether the software recognized the device or not. It would have been much better to select the device from a list.
After the devices are set up, you then tell the software what activities you want it to memorize. This is very powerful, a wizard-based method of macro programming. I soon had it programmed to perform the four activities I wanted (watch tv, watch dvd, listen to iPod, listen to music). I then downloaded the commands to the remote and tested it out.
This is where the issues started. Seems that some of the commands weren't recognized, and I was forced to endure an hours-long process of training the remote some of my specific commands. In most cases I believe that the software recognized the brand of my device, but not necessarily the particular model (I have Philips, Denon, and Sony devices - not really off-brand). Thus there were some generic commands that weren't right for my particular model. So I had to slowly discover which buttons worked and which did not, then go back and teach the unlearned commands to the remote. While this was not completely unexpected, it was very time-consuming and almost negated the value of the setup wizard.
The final issue that I had was in properly setting up activities. This takes a lot of trial and error. Additionally, there is no easy way to map device commands to activity commands. For example, I had to write down the TV remote commands down on a spare envelope and then manually input them into the activity commands section.
I can not properly express the joy I felt when, after hours of frustration, I finally had everything mapped out properly. The device works like a charm, and I am very satisfied with it overall. I'm sure that I'll completely love it after the setup fiasco has faded a bit.
So in summary, I would rate the device itself "5 out of 5", and the setup software "3 out of 5". Anyone with a fair degree of sophistication will be able to get it up and running, and behaving exactly the way they want it. But it may take several hours to do so.
Customer Review: Does its job well
Summary: 4 Stars
Initially I was wary of the remote trying to keep track of the state of each device. That does come up, occasionally. But the workaround is easy.
My girlfriend had a DVD player with a very annoying remote. We were always hitting the wrong button on it. I purchased a couple of inexpensive universal remotes that each had issues. Eventually I splurged and got her a Harmony 670. That remote showed me that the "Activities" paradigm works. But, I hate the button layout on that remote. Once again, I sometimes hit the wrong button. My girlfriend has gotten used to it.
When I purchased a remote for my mom, I got her the Harmony 550. And when my Tivo remote died, I purchased a 550 for myself.
The button layout of the 550 is much better than the 670. The button grouping/shapes makes it much less likely that I'll mistake which button I'm on. The numeric buttons are a bit awkward to reach, but I find that I rarely use the numeric buttons, anymore. I usually use the guide.
To work around the device mode issue, I set some of the programmable buttons to the most often out-of-sync situations. For example, my "Watch TV" activity is the upper-left programmable button. While in the Watch TV activity, I programmed that same button to be TV Power Toggle. That way, it doesn't matter if I turn the TV off with the remote or manually. Hitting that same button results in the TV being turned on in either case.
I put TV Power on a button in all the activities. I also put TV Input in all the activities. Plus, the appropriate device-specific power toggle in each activity. The built-in "Help" button on the remote will walk you through most of those situations. But I find just having the appropriate button programmed in the activity is much more direct. At least for me.
One minor issue is that, while the ordering of Activities can be rearranged, the ordering of Devices cannot. I need to get at the Set-Top device to change channels, occasionally, and it's on the second page. Not a big deal, just a minor nuisance.
The software for setting up the remote is pretty good, but not great. When entering device model numbers, there's not enough feedback. It feels like you're typing in numbers blind. When reordering buttons, it's very slow and tedious. Navigating around is mostly straightforward, but there are a few spots where it feels like you have to jump through hoops to get to where you can edit buttons.
And, personally, I'd prefer to simply store the remote config info on my own machine, rather than having to log into a remote server.
I've also read that they do not have any provision for multiple remotes on the same account. That one must create a separate account for each remote. I haven't bought remotes for the other two rooms where I watch TV, yet, but I can see that issue coming up.
Pros:
- It mostly Just Works
- It's trivial to recover from the remote getting out of sync
- Very good button layout
- Enough buttons to cover common device commands
- Buttons generally have a good feel
- Extensive database of devices
- I like replaceable batteries (very good battery life)
- This remote is currently about half the price of the Harmony One, which would be my next choice
Cons:
- Software works, but just a little clunky
- Numeric buttons a little awkward to use
- Another couple of programmable buttons would have been nice
- Devices cannot be re-ordered
Customer Review: Harmony 550 - end of search for a perfect remote?
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my third medium level (and price) programmable macro remote I have purchased to date and this may be the last one.
I use it in my living room with TV, DishNework receiver, Yamaha A/V receiver, CD jukebox and HD DVD player.
The problem I always had with my set-up was that in order to watch DVD movies I had to cycle my TV inputs to the correct one, change my receiver input to DVD and then change the surround setting to Dolby PL IIx by cycling one of the Yamaha's remote buttons twice. Sometimes I also had to switch my Zone2 off after it has been in use.
I was never able to replicate this feast with any of the medium priced universal remotes.
I can do this and more with the Harmony 550.
I was able to set up the activity to mimic the above mentioned sequence plus I was also able to set up other activities like watching TV and listening to music with all necessary steps including correct inputs.
What's even more important power-off sequence also now works flawlessly which normally is not so easy task as my Yamaha receiver has a separate remote button for power on, standby and power off which is virtually impossible to set up on a single remote button. However in case of Harmony 550 the power-off sequence takes care of that.
One important thing to mention is not to expect perfect results with the software setup wizard especially with complicated AV setups. It took me several tweaks to get everything right which might not be such a straight forward process and may potentially frustrate some people.
Overly I am very happy with the purchase and this remote will stick round for a while.
Amazon purchase experience very good as always.
The reason why I am not giving this remote 5 stars because of its few cons listed below.
PROS
- activities - this is something hat allows you to set up your AV components automatically and then sets up the remote buttons appropriately, it's a combination of a macro and remote setup
- setup software - did almost everything right automatically and is flexible enough to make your own tweaks
extensive equipment database, even had my old Pioneer CD jukebox and codes work
- look and feel, especially rubberized plastic on the bottom of the remote, it's pretty light and the glow feature is very good
- buttons, most of the commonly needed buttons are there so you do not need to browse through multiple menus, most of the buttons ergonomics are first class (see cons section)
- price - at this price I have not found anything that comes close to this remote
CONS
- software - yes I put it in this section as well because if it does not set up everything correctly via wizard then it is not that intuitive for an average user, at least I don't think it is, I am pretty technical and was able to figure it out and make what it needs to do for me but the process was not intuitive
- volume and channel buttons - they do not extrude from the remote like all other buttons and are not that easy to feel/use without looking so this is a minus for me, it perplexes me why such an overly well designed remote is missing this especially since these are the most used buttons by almost anybody
- remote signal lag - there is noticeable time lag between the button press and the reaction of the equipment, it's more annoying for some buttons than others, for example the directional buttons (up, down, left, right) may be a challenge in DVD menus or your satellite receiver guide screen
Customer Review: this remote is so great I could cry
Summary: 5 Stars
This remote is absolutely fantastic.
In my life, pre-Harmony, I had to use 4 different remotes to control all aspects of my entertainment system, I easily and quickly combined every process into one remote with the Harmony. I was even amazed to see a couple of my remote A/V switches such as my HDMI and RCA switches were fully compatible and worked right off the bat with zero tweaking. These switches are made by very small and obscure companies and I was very impressed to see support for these devices.
Presently, living post-Harmony, I don't even have to move anymore. This remote has become like my life control panel where like I said I don't even have to move. Being a vegetable has never been easier.
I have read many reviews with people complaining about this product, and a lot of their arguments against this product are unfair.
This is the lower end Harmony and does what it is intended to extremely well for the price. The software runs like butter, and the remote couldn't be easier to use and program. You absolutely 100% get what you pay for and as far as I'm concerned even more.
I've read people complaining about the lcd screen (which is plenty bright and easily viewable), but it is somewhat small. Basically this is the lower end Harmony so for those complaining about the screen should go to their nearest fire dept and take the jaws of life and open their wallet and purchase one of the higher model Harmony's that meet their needs. The package clearly shows the screen size and giving a negative review based on the screen is wrong. I love this remote and will not allow any false views of it.
As far as I know I think the software is web based. How a computer handles that is based on the computers specs. The software works very well and from what I have seen their are constnatly updates available. I don't think saying the software is slow is a fair judgement of this remote either and giving it a lower rating because of that isn't justifiable as every computer is different.
Naturally their may need to be some effort put in to program this remote if things don't work perfectly, but comparable to other remotes it's still 100x easier.
This remote can learn from other remotes and you can also fully customize things if so inclined. People have complained about this remote taking too long to program and that things dont work 100% smooth, but again, this should not take away from the rating of the remote as similar to the software, its usage and programming is mostly dependent on the specifications of what's running it. For the software its the specs of the computer and in this case the specs of the person running it.
If you have an IQ above 10 you will have absolutely no problem getting this to work, and quickly.
This product is amazing and fantastic and I am so fired up about this thing I tell everyone I know to get it. Do not hesitate to buy it as long as it suits your particular needs. Perhaps if you have some vision trouble and difficulty seeing, you may want to consider shelling a little extra for the higher model which may work out better for you because of the screen. The main difference between this and the 890 is a bigger display and rechargeable battery, both of which do not matter to me, but may to someone else.
Buy this remote I promise your quality of life will improve greatly.