luminary blur

I can confidently say that, apart from my iPhone, my new Logitech Harmony 550 is my favorite tech purchase of all time. It does everything it purports to do and while not as outwardly attractive as its more expensive siblings, it has the same basic features and performs them very well. The review continues after the jump.

Setup

The first thing that impressed me about the 550 was its packaging. Unlike those typical plastic packages that have to be sliced open and completely demolished in the process, the Harmony featured “easy opening” packaging that was essentially perforated along the edges. One pull on a corner and the whole thing came apart with very little effort. Nice and easy. Inside was an already-powered Harmony 550 along with a USB cable and extra set of four AAA batteries. Wait a minute. A device in 2008 that actually comes with batteries? Logitech scored some points from me just for that.

I’d already installed the Logitech Harmony Remote Software for Mac OS X to get some setup done before buying the remote. Unfortunately I couldn’t seem to set up any devices until actually plugging a Harmony device. While it would have been nice to get my device setup ready prior to bringing the actual remote into the mix, the setup process was so painless that in the end it wasn’t that much of an issue.

What’s nice about the device setup is that after picking a category and manufacturer all the software requires is a model number like AV-2135 or LCD32-AQ and it matches what you’ve entered with the closest remote profile in the database. No picking from a list, no having to figure out whether which model is closer to what you have. I currently have five devices set up to be controlled by my Harmony: a 32″ Westinghouse LCD HDTV, a Philips upconverting DVD player, a Motorola/Comcast HD DVR box, a 10-year-old Sony mini system, and an Apple TV. All devices work although the Sony mini system has the most issues with control. Considering its age I’m not surprised and the basic controls like volume and next input work fine and that’s all I really care about. I don’t use it for CDs or radio any more—just to take sound from my TV and output it through decently-sized speakers. I was surprised by how well it worked with my Apple TV. Perhaps I shouldn’t be given that the Apple TV remote has only six buttons but those six mapped perfectly to the Harmony. The directional pad works just like the one on the Apple Remote and the button labeled “menu” on the Harmony performs the same function as the “menu” button on the Apple Remote.

Once the device setup was complete, I was then prompted to set up my “activities.” These include things like “Watch a DVD” and “Watch PVR” and is essentially what the Harmony family of remotes is all about: task-based control. The Harmony software suggested a few common activities for me based on the devices I’d set up and walked me through modifying them to match my preferences. The questions were simple enough: Do you want to leave any equipment on all the time? How does your TV handle inputs? Which input goes with which device? All that was relatively simple. My biggest setup issue came not with the Harmony software but with my TV itself. One of the questions that’s asked is if your TV remote has separate buttons for each input or if they must be selected from an onscreen menu. My TV nicely supports both options. Where I ran in to the problem is that while every input has it’s own button one button on the TV remote—the HDMI button—is used not only to select the HDMI input independently from the others such as YPbPr or S-Video but also to switch between the two HDMI inputs on the TV. In this case I have two devices connected with HDMI: my cable box and my upconverting DVD player. In order to switch between the two, the same button is pressed. There are no separate HDMI 1 and HDMI 2 buttons. And there doesn’t seem to be a way to explain this conundrum to the Harmony software. So I had to default to the onscreen method which works find even though it’s a lot slower. Basically I had to tell Harmony what my inputs are and what order they are in. Since the remote “remembers” the current state of your system, it knows that if it is on the “Cable” input and the “Apple TV” input is 5 away, it must send the “Next Input” command six times: once to activate the input menu onscreen and five more times to select the correct input—a messy but effective way of doing it.

Everyday Use

Once I managed to get through all of the setup issues I was able to truly appreciate the Harmony 550 for what it is: a time-saving do-it-all that I’m not sure how I lived without. Since day one I put away every remote I had—TV, DVD, Apple TV, etc.—and have only used the Harmony without any need to ever get any other remote. When I found myself missing a button that I’d forgotten how much I used (the “swap” button on my Comcast remote) I initially fretted because there is no physical button on the Harmony for this feature. Ah, this is where the screen comes in. Any number of commands may be assigned to the soft keys at the top of the remote that flank the brightly backlit screen. So, for my “Watch PVR” function I have “List” for check my recorded shows, “Live TV” for jumping from a time-shifted state to the present, “Replay” for that handy-dandy 10-second skip back that helps me out immensely when I’ve fast-forwarded through a commercial but gone a bit too far, “OnDemand” for all those great free movies and HD content from Comcast, and my much-beloved “Swap.” Very convenient and very useful.

Conclusion

I apologize for the “Everyday Use” section being so short. I suppose it’s a testament to a great universal remote when one can truly say that they have absolutely no need to drag out the originals. That is what they’re for after all. I can’t recommend the Harmony 550 enough and for those out there with deeper pocketbooks then I, I’m sure those more expensive siblings won’t disappoint either.

written by Ben \\ tags: Harmony 550, Review, Tech