Logitech Harmony Home Control – 8 Devices (Black)
- Use your Smartphone (with available app) or included Harmony Remote for one-touch control of your entertainment system and home automation devices such as Philips Hue lights or Nest Learning Thermostat
- Companion remote includes full featured home entertainment controls including dedicated home automation controls
- Included Harmony Hub lets you control devices hidden behind cabinet doors or walls, including game consoles such as PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360
- Simple setup on computer or the available smartphone app – works with over 270,000 devices, including your TV, satellite or cable box, blu-ray player, Apple TV, Roku, Sonos, game consoles, Philips Hue lights, and more
- Model: 915-000239 (Control up to 8 Devices)
Logitech Harmony Home Control integrates connected lights, locks, binds, thermostats, sensors, home entertainment devices, and more-all controllable from your Harmony remote or mobile app.
List Price: $ 149.99
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Mostly Excellent,
I’ve been using the Logitech One remote for several years, and found that it was the best remote I’d ever used.
The only complaints I had with the Logitech One were:
1) The battery was unreliable. I had to replace it about once a year because it would swell up and stop holding a charge.
2) It didn’t work very well for controlling our Roku since it had an IR interface only.
Unfortunately, the next generation of Logitech remotes (like the Harmony Ultimate), just didn’t work very well because of the placement of the buttons in front of the touch screen. That’s why I was excited to see this remote where Logitech switched back to the excellent button placement of the previous remotes.
We upgraded our Media Center to a new Tivo Roamio, and decided it was time to upgrade our remote as well.
Anyway, here are the things we like about this new Harmony Home Control remote:
1) The feel of the remote is excellent! It has a much better feel than any remote I’ve ever used – with a solid-feeling rubberized body.
2) The button placement is just as good as the previous One and 900 series remotes – which is the most intuitive button setup I’ve ever used.
3) The setup was actually very simple. Fortunately, it was able to import my previous Logitech One remote setup; but, the addition of the new Tivo was very simple using the new mobile app on an Android phone.
It took all of 20 minutes to completely configure it; although, I did get hung up once with trying to customize the buttons. My mistake was trying to find the correct menu option instead of just following through the wizard. That part wasn’t very intuitive – but it wasn’t horrible either.
Once the setup was complete, all the menu options showed up in a way that made a lot more sense – but you have to finish the wizard first.
4) I love the home control options! We’re using this with a Lutron Caseta Wireless Smart Bridge – combined with several of their Caseta switches. Everything integrates perfectly, letting me control lights either individually or in groups.
Once you get the hang of it, the options are pretty cool:
– I have it setup to turn the family room light on at a dimmed setting automatically when we turn the TV off at night. It only turns on the light after sunset.
– There is another button that turns off all the downstairs lights.
– It’s easy to setup either a single light or a group of lights to turn on, off, dim etc… I will admit that dimming as a group isn’t overly useful; but, it does work.
5) It controls all my devices absolutely perfectly, and is extremely responsive.
6) I love the idea and function of the Hub sending all the remote commands instead of the actual remote. It really does make the control function more reliable – and there’s no more worrying about pointing at your devices (although it’s still a habit for me). The remote also comes with an extra IR blaster that plugs directly into the Hub if you have a device (like a TV) that’s placed separate from everything else.
Although the remote is mostly perfect, it does have a couple of irritating flaws:
1) The keys aren’t backlit. I can still live with it because the button positions are intuitive; but, it would be far better to have backlit keys.
2) I suspect the reason they don’t use backlit keys is because the remote runs off of a single coin battery instead of being rechargeable. That’s fine, and I suspect this battery will last a while – but I would rather have a rechargeable remote with backlit keys…
As far as a recommendation goes, if this had backlit keys I would recommend it whole-heartedly. Without the backlit keys, you’ll have to decide if an intuitive keypad layout is going to be enough. I will say that I’m happy with it.
[*** UPDATE 10/13/2014 ***]
After using this for a couple more weeks, we decided we liked it enough to replace the Logitech Harmony 900 Remote we were using upstairs.
Unfortunately, the new remote had a defective button (the DVR button didn’t work); but, Amazon was fast with providing a replacement.
We are now using 2 of these on the same account, and any member of the family can log into either one to issue commands with our phones as well.
This really is a great little remote – but I still wish it had backlit keys.
[*** UPDATE 11/5/2014 ***]
We’re still loving this remote, and I updated the review to cover some of the stuff I’ve been doing with the home automation…
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|It’s still a work in progress, but huge leap from the past Harmony remotes.,
Frankly, I expected a lot more trouble with this remote based on many negative reviews. It is a product in progress and both the remote and App could be improved (the App especially feels likle it was built by amateurs). Nevertheless, for amount of functionality and breadth of supported devices this new Harmony can not be beat.
Here is my case. I owned a number of Harmony remotes in the past and am a big fan of the platform. All of my previous remotes were Infrared only, but I have PS3 and, recently, Amazon Fire TV Stick, both of which are Bluetooth based devices. So I was still collecting a number of different remotes on my couch that I had to switch based on what I was doing. The real reason though I decided to upgrade my remote was addition of the smart light switches to my home and SmartThings Hub that is controlling all smart lights, dimmers and AC outlets I installed over the past month. I wanted a remote that would not only control my TV and electronics, but also allow me to dim the lights when starting the movie.
I spent few hours reading and watching reviews of the new Harmony Home Control. Most of the negative reviews were split in two categories. The first revolved around the remote that did not work (either because it is faulty or device is not supported or user does not know how to troubleshoot it). When you see too many of these reviews, it gives you a pause about reliability of the product. Thankfully, this is not the case here as only fraction of the negative reviews were specifically describing faulty devices. The majority of bad reviews were centered around App and some very specific compatibility issues. So I reasoned that App will be improved over time and most of the specific complaints did not apply to me.
FIRST IMPRESSION:
First thing that surprised me when I opened the box was how slim the remote is. It is very stylish and feels great when holding. All the buttons are easily reached by one hand and are in the place I expect them to be. It was almost as if I had used this remote for many years before and my hand had muscle memory of it still lingering.
I will also come to the negatives right away. First one (and this is BIG) is lack of back-lighting. Frankly, I don’t understand the rationale for this. Yes, lighting keys would bring the cost a bit up and it would require a more beefy batteries installed, but this is such a common request from everyone that for Logitech to omit it in premium remote is a head scratcher. It’s like buying a Mercedes only to find out that it omits cruse control. Ridiculous!
The second negative is the a lot of keys are grouped too close together. When you are trying to feel them in your hand, it is not obvious were one button ends and next one starts Logitech should have either created better spacing, put ridges around some most used buttons or use central pimple on buttons to quickly identify them.
INITIAL SETUP:
Setup was super easy. Gone are the days when I had to connect my Harmony to the PC over USB cable, carefully plan the activities, sync it, then go to TV room only to find out that something was not working just right and repeating the whole cycle again. This time I specificaly decided to do setup anew (as there is also an option to port it from your previous Harmony profile). So sat on a couch in front of TV with remote and tablet (both Android and iPad tablets worked fine, though iPad interface was more refined). I prepared myself to struggling with setup and back and forth troubleshooting, but 30 minutes and 7 devices later I was done. The setup could not be easier. The time included firmware update on the Hub, installing Harmonmy app and creating new Harmony ID on the tablet, adding all the devices by vendor and model, connecting to my SmartThings Hub, pairing Harmony with PS3 and Fire TV, getting all the activities running, testing everything few times over and assigning custom buttons for few things I wanted to get covered. Great job, Logitech!
SUPPORT FOR PS3/PS4:
PS3 is fully supported. You need to pair the Hub and the PS3 by following prompt on the tablet and using your PS3 controller to navigate to settings. This took a minute. After that I no longer need a PS3 remote. All buttons are migrated and assigned properly if you choose Watch PS3 activity. For few odd buttons (Subtitle, Angle, Pop-up menu) I quickly assigned custom buttons from the tablet. I like how easy it is and how Harmony App highlights all the buttons that are still unassigned on the App interface. The best feature though is the ability to test al of them right away. No extended synchronization required!
PS4 is not supported at the moment. This is mostly Sony’s fault as they are yet to release a Bluetooth interface for PS4. Yes, you can use workaround to assign play/pause and some other basic buttons, but most of the functions would still not work (you can not wake up PS4 or put it…
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