The Mister and I received our Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote controls last week. If you'll remember, we received them from Bzz as part of their campaign. After trying them out for about a week, here are our initial thoughts:
First of all, it's really neat looking. Sleek, shiny, black with a color touch screen makes it look very classy and the touch screen is easy to read. The buttons are in convenient locations. Also, it came with a charging station so that we won't constantly have to change batteries which is an issue at my house with all of our various electronic gadgets that we can't seem to get enough of.
Things that I don't really like about it, is that it's hard to get the Harmony One to "talk" to our old remote to learn its functions. See, you have to point them at each other, infrared sensor to infrared sensor so that the new remote can learn the old remote's functions. I only had to do this with my cable box remote because the Harmony One was able to program functions for my other devices (the receiver, DVD player, TV, etc.) by entering in their respective model numbers into the program that you install onto your computer from the CD-Rom that comes with the remote. Funny thing, I accidentally pushed the "7" button when trying to program the "6" button so I can't change the channel to channel 6 with just pushing the button. Trying to get the darn remotes to talk to each other to fix this problem has been a royal PITA. Another thing that I don't like about it is that for $250, it really doesn't do a whole lot that my universal remote that came with my cable box didn't do and it was free with the box.
Bottom line...I'm a gadget freak so I really like having such a nifty looking remote but if I had had to pay for it out of my own pocket, I would have been disappointed. I would only recommend this to someone who has so many remotes that they need something to streamline their electronics. If you already have a universal remote that works for you, don't bother paying $250 for this one.
