Customer Reviews

Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote Control

5 star:		(394)
4 star:		(206)
3 star:		(45)
2 star:		(35)
1 star:		(48)

 

 

Well, my Sima SUR-20 remote finally died after 5 years, so I had to find a replacement. I decided that I wanted a true universal/learning remote that had more than just a touchscreen. I started my search with Harmony because I have heard a lot of good things about them. My criteria included: learning, full macros, configurable, easy to use for less technologically advanced people, good button lay out, and no rechargeable batteries. This pretty much ruled out the 880, 720, and 890. Honestly, I'm not that big a fan of the peanut shape anyhow. So, my real choices became the 520 and 550. Not too much difference, mainly button layout and device limitations. In the end, I like the 550 layout best.

I installed the software fairly easily. I made sure NOT to install the additional software that checks for updates, and I removed the software from the startup menu. Next I collected all the device model numbers. 10 minutes later I had the first iteration of my remote up and running. I spent the next hour tweaking the labels and layout of the buttons in my activities.

The result is that all my devices are setup perfectly (TV, DVD, Home Theater, Cable Box/DVR, Roomba, and my HP Laptop). The 550 does a great job of switching inputs on my TV and Receiver. Actually, I have more functionality with this remote than on the remote that came with my dvr (skip forward)!

I had equal ease of setup with my laptop and roomba. The only real negative is the speed, or lack thereof, of the software. The program is slow and it occasionally freezes for a couple minutes at a time. However, since you only need to use it when you setup a new device, it's not a deal breaker for me.

The remote is intuitive enough for most anyone. The help button easily walks you through any issues you might have when turning on or switching between activities. The activities are easy to configure and I was even able to set it up to leave my DVR on all the time.

All in all, the remote is great. I think that it is important to compare it to other universal remotes before complaining about it. It may not be as quick as entering a couple of codes, but the benefits are extremely worth it!

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.

I have owned one of the orginal Harmony remotes for three years, and just upgraded to the new 550.

Other reviewers describe the effectiveness of Harmony's "activities" based set up, and it truly is a great solution for the complicated "many remotes on the coffee table" problem. I'd like to address how easy it was to upgrade from an older model to the 550.

I spent about 45 minutes perfecting my first Harmony using the online programming interface, and found it to be easy to use and comprehensive. When I unpacked my new 550, all I had to do was plug the remote into my computer's USB port, install the updated software (5 minutes), and download all of my existing programming (another 5 minutes). It worked perfectly!

Great new features:

The rubberized plastic back of the 550 makes it much less likely to slip off a table and fall to the floor.

The backlit LCD display is much easier to read.

Slimmer, more appealing styling.

Keys, while a bit small, are indented which provides much better tactile feel and response than the older model.

I am very pleased with this upgrade, and recommend it to anyone would like to easily control a variety of components with an intuitive, easy to use, single remote control. Well worth the investment!

After doing a lot of research, and finally reading slick045's and Justin's review below (the icing on the cake), I decided to go with the 550. I was looking for a simple, cool looking, rectangular remote that could control all of my devices (without breaking the bank). Within an hour, I had the remote working exactly how I wanted (actually, in 10 minutes I had the first iteration of it going). I was suprised that it even had my remote control lights in the online database (3BM, which is not a common brand). I know a lot of people say the software is difficult, but once you spend 15 minutes playing around with it you will figure it out. I am technically savvy but I don't think you need to be with this remote's software...in fact, I was glad it had so much programming flexibility. The only "major" tweak I had to do was remove the delay on the 550 remote for my Scientific Atlanta cable box as there was a noticeable pause when entering channel numbers. I did this by going to "Adjust the delays" for the device and changing the "Inter-Device Delay" from 1000ms to 0ms and walla it was as quick as the original cable remote. I was also impressed how easy it was to set up the activities to do multiple commands at once. Bottom line, definitely a smart buy. As this is my first day with the remote, I will be sure to update if things change, but I really don't think they will. I am a happy customer down from 6 remotes to 1!

Like other people with several pieces of electronics, I had become frustrated by having to set up and use different control units. Of course, one can sometime get an individual control unit to control more than one piece of equiment (e.g., control your TV off of a DVD control). I had tried to do this when I bought a new Toshiba HD-DVD unit and wanted to set up the DVD controller so that it could control my Sony TV. The problem was, however, that there were about 30 codes you had to choose from listed in the DVD manual to control a Sony TV with no sense which one might work. I mentioned to someone I knew after getting through about half of the list of codes and he suggested I look at getting a Harmony unit.

The Harmony unit is great!! It took about 15 minutes to set up and essentially get all of my common tasks such as playing a DVD, watching a TV show, listening to the radio, watching a video, etc all onto one easy-to-use control. In setting up the control, you link to your computer (and I have a Mac, which offered no problems) and simply enter the model numbers of each piece of equipment you have. You then do through simple menus to set up various tasks such as watching DVDs. The software will ask you some basic questions (i..e, which input on your TV does your DVD unit feed into) and then sets things up so that the one control takes the place of all of the others.

Instead of turning a TV on with one control, then turning your AV unit with another and the DVD player with the third, you simply click one of the activities listed on the screen such as watch a DVD. The appropriate units turn on just as if you had used the three separate controls and the Harmony unit becomes your DVD controller with all of the functions built into it. If you then want to watch a TV show instead, you click the button next to "watch TV" and the DVD player shuts off and the Harmony becomes a TV contoller.

I have found this to be a great product with a lot of nice features, both in terms of hardware and software. Other reviewers have described many of these, but one thing that has impressed me is the "glow" button that lets you light up the various buttons and screen so you can easily use the controller in a dark room. On the software front, it is very easy to make changes in the settings on your controller (e.g., if you switch jacks into which audio sources will feed) -- the inetrfaces are very nicely designed and efficient.

I have never said that a product deserves 6 stars, but this one does. It really helps to clear "control clutter" and makes it a simple task to manuever your way around you home theatre/audio system.

I've been using this remote for at least 6 months now and I must say this thing is awesome. Despite what other reviewers would have you believe, the ability to have every button from all your remotes is what I think makes this remote so great. Any "soft button" logitech doesn't include in the initial programing of your device can be learned through the IR port.

Also, my remote never misses a beat when switching between viewing modes. If I go from "watch TV" to "watch DVD", it gets all of the inputs right every time. This may be another issue of knowing how to program it properly.

I just had to give my 2 cents after seeing people giving this bad reviews based on improper use or not reading directions. I would buy this remote again in a heartbeat!

I already had a Harmony 628 and two 659's. I am a big fan of the Harmony concept and liked the 659 model with a single big exception: the location of the DVD/VCR play/fast-forward/stop/etc. controls at the very bottom of the remote where they are hard to access one handed. The 628 has those controls located further north on the remote, but it is missing some buttons that are useful with TIVO.

The 5xx series at first appears to be an improvement on the 6xx series. Specifically, the 5xx models feel just a little bit better in the hand and are more stylish. The DVD/VCR play control buttons are better located than on the 659 and the TIVO-friendly buttons are there. However, that is about it in terms of advantages vs. the 6xx series. The rest is all disadvantages. a few:

The buttons are too small and worse yet close to gether. The GUIDE to Prev banks are particularly bad except that you can activate them by pressing just the outer edge of the button which is non-intuitive and probably just lucky.

The black letters on blue background display is pretty, but hard to read in anything other than a very bright or very dark room. The 659 used black on a bright green background and was much more readable. A victory of pretty over practical in the 5xx.

The needless rubber cover over the mini-usb port looks and feels like a cheap afterthought. The cover does not easilly re-attach after programming. It actually resists. I'm sure it will eventually tear off solving the remounting problem.

The directional buttons and OK key make an annoying and noisy click when pressed. No need of the aural feedback as there is plenty of tactile feedback. They fixed what was not broken.

You can re-name your activities with more characters than will fit on the LCD display. This means you can rename on your computer and then upload to the remote and finally find out half of what you wrote does not appear. No warning given. Dumb.

The off button is located top left when for right-handed people top right would be easier to use.

Overall the buttons just do not feel as good nor operate as reliably as the buttons on the 6xx remotes. Sometimes you press and nothing happens.

Styling-wise, the 5xx series is a success. In terms of practicality and intellegent design it is a step back from the comparably priced 659 and even the cheaper 628.

My advice, buy a 659 while you can or save up for one of the higher line 6xx models.

If there had been no 6xx series, I would rate the 5xx series with four stars because the Harmony concept is a great one. But given that Logitech took a step back from the 6xx series in designing the 5xx series, I can only give a three star rating.

I'm a little confused by some of the ratings here, particularly from people who say the remote can't juggle multiple changes at once. I have a HD TV with multiple inputs, a home theater receiver, a HD DVR/cable box, VCR/DVD combo (which has never worked with any other universal remote), a digital streaming box (ditto) and an XM radio and this remote handles them all. It will automatically set up and switch all inputs and it works great with the Scientific Atlanta DVR box (a problem for another user here but certainly not for me).

Insanely easy to set up -- but be sure to follow the instructions. As long as you hook this up to a PC with Internet access, it will do all of the work for you.

I did knock off a star because it has fewer buttons than some of the more complex/expensive Harmony remotes. This means that if you have to get into the more esoteric settings of some of your individual components, you have to scroll through many menu screens -- but I have found that for all the functions you use everyday, this remote works great. Spring for the extra cash if you want even more control. I don't need it and you probably don't either.

I particularly love the way it will work based on tasks -- i.e., "watch television" -- instead of you having to switch to each individual component on the remote. This is basically a macro operation without all of the annoyance of programming macros.

The Harmony 550 is an "all right" but not a great universal remote. For the price tag it demands, there are better options.

Shortcomings:
(1) Ergonomics -- the buttons are just plain too small. And if the size of the buttons isn't trouble enough, the non-spatial row of buttons design is a second cause for annoyance. In other words, you never get an intuitive feel for the button layout, and it results in daily occurence of user error...even after 8 months of ownership. And it's nearly impossible to navigate with the lights in the room dimmed.


(2) Ease of configuration -- you can get up and running in crude fashion in 15 minutes. Getting the remote to really work like the one that came with your TV/DVD player/Receiver takes about 2.5 hours of trial-and-error optimization. It turns the volume up & down in much larger quantums than the OEM remote, and will often change one too many channels when channel surfing. Through loading and reloading and resting the remote, these types of kinks can be reduced after a 1-2 hours of debug. But they can't be eliminated altogether.

Logitech took on a big challenge in making the king of universal remotes. This one has software optimization and ergonomic problems that other Logitech remotes don't have.

I'd heard a lot about Logitech Harmony remotes, so this was a huge disappointment.

If you just want something to switch your equipment on and off, it's somewhat useful. Maybe. But if you are hoping to set several settings for different activities, plan on spending hours messing around.

The much-vaunted database of settings isn't that useful, because it's incomplete and inaccurate. I have popular Samsung and Panasonic products, that aren't too old or too new (about one year old models). They don't even list all the inputs on my Samsung HDTV (the cable antenna is missing!? - doh!), so of course I can't set up the remote to use them right. And the menu navigation buttons aren't set right, so I have to figure out how to change them. I had to manually add some key features, too.

Accessing anything but the most commonly used remote buttons requires either wading through a long cryptic list of commands that might or might not match what the remote calls them; or customizing the setup so the commands you use most appear at the top.

So you have to carefully study your existing remotes, think about which features you need, make sure they are set up and accessible. Or, keep ALL your old remotes handy for when you need something other than the top 20 basic buttons.

Custom setup isn't easy. Using their site/software for detailed setup is cumbersome. There's no simple way to reorder the commands to get the ones you want at the top - you have to manually delete and reenter 30-80 commands! One solution is to use the Picture and Sound buttons and just put the settings in those lists for an activity. But it's still really cumbersome to re-order if you change it. And the website sometimes decides it knows better than you do what order you meant to put things in.

So, even with popular gear, it's not like the settings are complete, accurate or setup to be easy to use right from the database. This problem would apply to all Logitech Harmony remotes, as they use the same setup software / site.

It's just one more thing you need to spend several hours setting up.

And even then, it's not that great to use. They should have made the remote slightly larger, with bigger buttons that have less space between them.

Not sure it's worth messing with. The universal remote that came with my TV does a lot of this.