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| Brand: Logitech
Category: CE
Buy New: £51.91
New (7) from £45.00
Rating:  70 reviews
Sales Rank: 1107
Media: Electronics
Fragile: No
Batteries: 4
Batteries Included: Yes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4
MPN: 966208-0914
Model: 966208-0914
EAN: 5099206989337
ASIN: B000FTOOKS
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 70
 NOT straightforward, could definitely be more user-friendly ! October 5, 2008
Suresh (North West, England)
The principle on which this remote is based is attractive: an exhaustive database of remote commander codes, a specific set of codes downloadable to your remote via the internet, and you have virtually a clone of the original remote... right? Not entirely. br / br /The most important shortcoming of this principle is that the Logitech remote canNOT have nearly the same number of buttons as the other dedicated remotes for each applicance, so there is compromise from the word go. I ended up adjusting the required commands on any available button, sometimes quite illogically (for example, TV or DVR power on-off had to be located on the Prev button, because every time you wanted to turn on-off the TV or DVR, you would not want to press the Devices button, and then choose TV or DVR button, and then find the Power button and press it). br / br /What I had to do, to make this reasonably (and only reasonably) easy to use is to teach the remote commands for the STB, DVR and TV all in the same 'Device' area. The alternative was to keep pressing three buttons to execute one function, which I obviously wanted to avoid. So, it is a compromised existence, compounded by the fact that I had to memorise (and make my family memorise !) the relatively convoluted button allocation. br / br /And do not be under any illusions about the difficulty of setting up this remote, unless you are going to be satisfied with basic functionality. And I daresay that if you chose this kind of remote, you are not one to want basic functionality, you want more, and you also expect user-friendliness as a matter of course. You do not get that, be warned ! br / br /Also, like another reviewer, the buttons could have better feel or feedback, you press them and you wonder whether you pressed them enough, especially during daytime when the 'glow' isn't as easily seen. I had a Sony RMAV 3000 remote, which was excellent, but I had two of these break down after about a year and a half. The buttons on the Sony remote were, however, superb. You might think this is a flippant point, but a remote is used a lot every day, and this downside does become perceptible. br / br /The buttons are small, period. My fingers arent huge, and I have to look at the remote most times when I operate it. Again, compare with the Sony RMAV... perfectly placed to operate without taking your eyes off the telly. What a shame they couldn't make it more reliable ! br / br /But to be fair, the remote does perform the tasks it is meant or programmed to perform. The 'Activities' button I found to be totally useless, and I didnt once use it, what with Smartlink being available on most TVs these days. And I am sure the other reviewers who could set this remote up in 1-3 hours were either much more technically savvy than I am, or much less fussy than I am about what they wanted out of this remote. I took, overall, about 8-10 hours to get this remote to work as I wanted it to. And I still find little things which I don't like about it, and I change them every so often. The actual technology and software is, however, impossible to fault. br / br /I have now concluded that there isn't a perfect universal remote ! But if I didn't mind spending about 120 pounds every two years, I would go for the Sony RMAV remote. But for the cost (and if the Logitech remote doesn't break down after two or so years), this is hard to beat. br / br /To sum up, I am not entirely happy with it, but not unhappy enough to have returned it. Reach your conclusions... br / br /
Wield God-like power . . . . .eventually September 26, 2008
Mr. S. J. Garrett (London United Kingdom)
. . .because you can't rush it. Remote-control overload on the sofa motivated this purchase, and I thought that even if the one-touch control system didn't pan out with all my diverse equipment the unit would still be useful. In practice I think it would be fiddly to use it that way, particularly for kids or technophobes, but luckily there is no need, at least in our case - we now have spookily clever one-button activation of a variety of kit, pretty much as required for any specific use. Wait though; the set-up is slow (balky web connection notwithstanding), and not free from pitfalls - you might find that some of the default set-ups for activities don't work for you and customising is not as easy as it should be. It's funny at first, with equipment activating and turning off seemingly at random, but it gets frustrating. In the end though, if you persevere and are prepared to go back over things and try different options/approaches/sequences (budget about an afternoon's tinkering), the work is worth it - it really is very cool once it's sorted.
 Excellent Harmony 555 September 26, 2008
W. Iddon (North West, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this remote a week or so ago, excellent piece of kit. br /I have a V+ box, DVD Surround Sound, TV and HDMI switch setup. The Logitech database had details for each one of my devices and so the remote works perfectly! br / br /The setup process does take some time but that can be down to your own personal preferences too. It can be fairly fast if you just keep the button selections as recommended by the database, but if you are willing to put the time in, the rewards in the remote functionalitity are great. br / br /It does everthing the other 4 remotes did completely and without all of the hassle. br / br /Great ergonomic design and weight and becomes intuitive after a couple of hours useage. Another great feature is the "Glow" button. This allows you to backlight the remote when watching a film so can adjust volume and pause etc without errors as is normally the way in a darkened room. br / br /Highly recommend this product.
Great remote .. but some things to be aware of ... September 14, 2008
Stephen Lewis (Geneva, Switzerland)
Technically this is a great product, but there are some issues that potential buyers should be aware of. br / br /The most annoying issue (which hopefully Logitech can fix via firmware sometime) is that although this remote has a low battery warning, the warning level is set higher than the level at which performance becomes unreliable! Symptoms of low battery (other than the low battery warning message itself) are that sometimes commands are not sent when you press a key. The most obvious indication of that is that the Activities light is illuminated whenever the IR sender is sending, so if you press a key and that light doesnt illuminate, you know that the command isnt being sent. A related symptom is that the remote seems sometimes to buffer the keys you pressed but doesnt send them, and then after a while (when you press another key) sends all of them all in a batch. br / br /The implication of this behaviour seems to be that the threshold for when the IR sender decides the battery is too low to send is not the same as the tolerance used by the function that provides the warning message, or that it's checked more often so that the message doesn't appear when the IR sender function suddenly notices that the battery is too low and decides not to send the commands. Logitech obviously has a bug in the way the remote manages battery condition - maybe they will fix it one day. br / br /The other major issue is that the remote needs to know the state of devices it controls. As other reviewers have mentioned, this means that if you manually change the state of a device by pressing a button on a front panel or another remote, the behaviour can seem erratic or confused. This manifests itself most often with devices that don't have discrete ON and OFF IR commands (some devices that just have a single power toggle button on the remote, also have discrete ON and OFF commands that can be programmed, some however do not). In these cases, the remote can't send an ON command to ensure the device is on, it can only send a power command which instead of turning the device on, turns it off because someone already turned it on and the remote doesn't know that. br / br /To make matters worse, if you have a TV that switches automatically to an AV input when you turn on a SCART connected device, the remote will not know about that unless you do some advanced configuration. Even worse if you have some SCART devices that do that and some do not (because they're not capable, or because you used a SCART cable that doesn't have sufficient wires in it to support that signalling.) If you have devices like this and are not naturally technical and patient with technical devices, I would not recommend this remote. Clever though it is, programming these Harmony remotes to cope well with the unpredictability of device states is complex. To be fair, it's not all Logitech's fault: unless the manufacturer of the device in question thought to support IR commands to directly control the power state or to select inputs (the two most common issues) then there's little that Logitech can do about it with this kind of state-aware remote. If you have the choice, I'd say but the remove and avoid buying devices that don't support discrete IR commands .. but that's probably not practical for most people because most empoyees of manufacturers and retailers don't know themselves whether their devices support discrete commands. br / br /In summary: this is a great product that works well if you have "nicely-behaved" devices from considerate manufacturers, or if you're a keen techie, but with too many challenges for the average Joe who bought his devices from one of the many inconsiderate or ignorant manufacturers or retailers. I don't regret buying mine, but I do resent the effort it has taken to overcome these issues. br / br /PS one bad point: I had a problem with the Harmony Configuration Software where the configuration downloaded to my remote was corrupted and it stopped working properly .. and one good point: when I emailed customer service for assistance, they confirmed, diagnosed, fixed and tested the solution within 24 hours. Now that's impressive customer service - kudos to Logitech!
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