Customer Reviews

Logitech Harmony 676 Universal Remote Control

5 star:		(98)
4 star:		(46)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

I bought this remote a few months ago to replace an aging Sony RM-VL900. This remote is absolutely perfect for our family. Here are the three things I was looking for (and found in the Harmony 676)...

1) Activity-based remote - the remote is very easy for the kids to understand because they choose the activity that they want (TV/DVR, Video games, or DVD) and the remote then sets everything up for them to control the devices for that activity. FF and RWD control either the DVD or the DVR depending on what you are doing. All the inputs for the TV and A/V Receiver are automatically set correctly. It makes using a system with multiple components very simple.

2) Hard buttons - I have a Pronto but it sits in the closet. Despite the flexibility that the LCD touchscreen offers, there are two big disadvantages: complicated setup and using the remote by "feel" or "touch." I really like the soft rubber buttons on the Harmony 676. It's very easy to use without looking at the remote because you quickly learn where all the transport buttons are. The rubber has a nice feel and they travel enough that you can tell when you have pressed the button down. As a bonus, you get an LCD screen with extra buttons for those commands that don't fit on a real button.

3) Computer-based setup - I liked the Sony VL-900 because of the nice rubber buttons but I lost my learned commands and settings a couple times because the batteries were removed. After programming it for the third time, I vowed that my next remote would have a computer-based setup so that I could save all the settings and restore them if needed. The Harmony remote uses a web-based utility that allows you to save everything should you need to restore your remote settings. The web-based approach also allows you to benefit from all the other users that have already learned all the commands for your devices.

The Harmony 676 met our needs perfectly and I can't say I've ever enjoyed a remote more than this one (and I've tried plenty). The color faceplates are a nice feature. Ours is currently red because we have red accents in our TV room and my wife loves it. The faceplates are a nice deep color too, not cheap and plasticy like you might expect.

Here are a couple more things to consider as you shop around and compare the other Harmony remotes...

The Harmony 680 is similar but has two major differences. First the buttons are arranged so that the transport buttons are around the cursor. I like having the transport buttons at the top where they are laid out in a logical line. I think it makes using the remote by touch simpler as well. Also, the 680 has hard plastic buttons rather than soft rubber buttons. I prefer the feel of the soft buttons.

Some of the other Harmony remotes have more buttons, but they have strange (to my taste) button shapes and layouts. I don't like how the buttons on the 688 are next to each other. It makes it much harder to use by feel. I have to look at the 688 to make sure I'm pressing the right button.

The 659 has the transport buttons at the very bottom of the remote, which is an awful position if you use a DVR to watch TV. We use the transport buttons all the time to fast-forward through commercials, etc. and the 676 has them in a nice place to use often.

When you program the remote, keep in mind that the activity screens and the device screens are different. I spent some time tweaking the DVD layout and LCD buttons only to find that they didn't show up when I pressed "watch DVD." I needed to go back and make the same changes to the "watch DVD" activity that I had made to the DVD device.

This is my third Harmony Remote, and is the best yet. Like all of the previous models, it supports every A/V device I own and the web-based setup has a good balance of ease-of-use and flexibility.

The interchangable face plates are a nice extra, but not a major factor in my selection. The button layout is very good and the LCD screen can be set up to add a couple of buttons needed for specific devices. (I added the "live" button for my Hi-Def DVR as an example).

This is a good value when compared to other "universal remotes" and the Tech Support is amazing. I replaced at least five remotes and support the following components: 50" HDTV, HD DVR, Receiver, DVD player, VCR, 5 disc CD player, and an old dual cassette deck.

This was a breeze. It updated its own firmware, and then the cd installed program updated to a newer version. I followed the instructions, and as long as you enter the exact model number as written on the back of the units to be controlled it works great. There is a built in help menu right in the controller itself, for example, it wasn't turning on the TV with the DVD and the A/V receiver. I pressed help and it asked if the TV was on. When I said no, it turned on the TV. From that moment on it never failed to turn on the TV.

I also like the changeable faceplates. I use red for the living room and blue for the bedroom. This allows you to have a couple in the house and easily distinguish them.

Logitech has the best tech support I ever spoke too. Free, and very knowledgeable. The guy spent ten minutes before I bought the remote explaining how with Logitech, 99 percent of the time, learning is not required (although it can do it fine). I just entered the model numbers of the units, and it asked how the wires were situated in the back of the A/V, and WHAM, it figured the rest out and it works great now. I push on button and the vcr is playing. I press another and the DVD is going. I push another and everything turns off. It even tunes the TV to channel 3 or 4 when the vcr mode is selected.

Very easy to setup and use, and the wife loves it!

BY THE WAY: I saw a review written around the same time as mine that you need to power down everything when switching between different activities. This is not true in my case. If I am in TV mode and hit DVD, it simply turns on the DVD and selects the correct video input automatically. If I were to then hit VCR, the DVD will turn off, the VCR turns on, and the TV automatically goes to channel 3 without turning off (what my VCR to TV input is) . If you find yourself having to power down everything between different activities, you most likely have a timing issue with the device delay (time between sending each device the correct command in a multi device sequence) Either goto the help menu right in the control or call logitech TECHNICAL assistance. You can get it right and it will save the life of that expensive TV.

I've had my Harmony for a week, but only operational for about 5 days. I tried to set it up the first night I got it, but ran into problems about halfway through, when it was ready to update the remote with all my newly configured activities and commands. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Harmony tech support that night without resolving the problem. However, the tech support was wonderful and I wasn't upset or feeling like I had wasted my time when we got off the phone. The tech support rep did everything he could, even staying beyond their quitting time, trying to help me out. In the end, he arranged for a developer or more experienced support analyst to give me a call back at my convenience. So on Saturday morning, another rep called me and knew basically what my problem was -- Norton Internet Security (e.g., Norton Personal Firewall and Antivirus on my PC, running Windows 2000 Pro). The latest Norton updates apparently corrupt the binary file that the setup routine tries to download to update the remote with my specific settings. The support rep gave me two different workarounds to avoid this problem, and now I can change/update my remote settings just fine, but it requires rebooting my PC first and not allowing Norton to run at all. Not ideal, especially because it means having to be connected to the internet temporarily without my firewall or antivirus software protecting my PC, but it looks like Norton is at fault, not Harmony.

So, even though I had some trouble getting it set up, the tech support AND the remote get 5 stars. The remote does way more than I thought it would from the pictures and descriptions that I could find online. The LCD screen has pages of extra "logical" buttons that cover all the functions for each particular device, and even offers some functionality that is not on the devices' actual remotes. For instance, my DVD remote has no "eject" button, but I can do it via the Harmony remote. As another example, the Harmony provides direct-button access to modes on my TV and A/V receiver that I would normally have to press a single button multiple times to access (e.g., the TV/Video input selection on my TV or the DSP surround modes on my A/V receiver). I have not had to "learn" a single button from any of my original remotes -- they're literally all there, and then some! I was concerned about having all my DirecTV DVR/TiVo functionality at my fingertips but it is all there and mapped very intuitively -- the extra functions that aren't covered by the physical buttons are available via the LCD screen and its buttons. Awesome!!

Any buttons that don't happen to be included for your particular device (I haven't found one yet that isn't for mine) can be learned from your device remote and then assigned to a physical or logical (i.e., LCD screen) button. You can even control, to some extent, in what order the logical buttons appear on the LCD, and you get to name the logical buttons yourself!

The remote apparently tracks the states of your devices internally, so it knows from previous operations/activities which of your devices are turned on or off, what settings they're on, etc. So if you're watching TV and want to watch a DVD, press the "Watch DVD" activity button and it knows the TV is on, so it doesn't send a signal for that (which on most TV's or other devices is simply a toggle code that would unintentionally power it off) and instead it only sends the signals for the DVD player and receiver to turn on, as well as any signals to set the appropriate inputs. In fact, on my TV (and most others) the TV/Video button starts from the current input it's on and cycles through a loop of inputs, so the Harmony even figures out how many of those signals it needs to send to get it to the appropriate Component input for watching a DVD!

One gotcha with that is if you turn things on with the remote, and then turn them off (or change modes) by hand on the device itself, I think it will get the remote out of sync because it doesn't know you turned the device off manually. For example, if you began watching a DVD by turning everything on with the Harmony, and then afterwards you turn the DVD player off by hand (or it turns itself off with a power-save feature), then if you press the "Watch TV" activity on the Harmony it would try to turn the A/V receiver and the DVD player off (since they're not needed for TV viewing) but since the DVD player had been turned off manually so it would probably turn it back on. (Note: I still need to test these theories out.)

One other snag is that you can't exactly tell it to NOT turn off devices that aren't used for the next activity. For example, after watching a DVD, I may want to watch TV with my receiver still on to hear it through the speakers. If I hit the regular "Watch TV" activity button, since the receiver is not configured as a necessary component for watching TV, it will turn it off no matter what. BUT, there is a way around this -- you just need to set up another activity button (accessed via the orange "More" button and called, in my example, "Watch TV with Stereo") and make the receiver an included component. That way it would leave the receiver on (and even change the inputs appropriately for TV input). And then, say you no longer want the receiver on for TV, you just press the regular "Watch TV" activity button and it will shut the receiver off since it is not a configured component in that button.

All the Harmony remotes are essentially the same, with mostly the same buttons. This remote (676) has "A" and "B" buttons that the other versions don't have, allowing you a couple of extra physically buttons to assign function to. The 659 remote doesn't have physical buttons for next/prev track/chapter. Other than that, the biggest differentiator is the look and feel -- it's mostly an issue of how the buttons are laid out (and, of course, the 880 has a color screen). The 676 remote works perfectly well for DVR/TiVo systems, as the transport buttons are all logically laid out and easily reachable for DVR activities like advancing, pausing, etc. Slow motion and Live TV buttons appear in the LCD screen.

So even though I've pointed out some "gotchas" (with the intent of helping others figure out how to get around them), this is an incredible remote and there is no other universal remote that can do this much this easily. Kind of like a DVR/TiVo, this is one of those purchases you mull over for a long time, and then when you finally go for it, you wonder why you ever waited so long!

Over the last several years I have purchased four high-end so-called universal remotes. All of them sort of worked but not really. There was always some function that was not supported that I would have to drag out the original remotes. I found one two years ago that I was able to teach how to control the mish-mash of components in my entertainment system. It took weeks to program everything into it and to get every function covered. Then I discovered that it had an huge appetite for batteries (At lease once a month I had to replace the six AA batteries it took to keep it running.) My brother-in-law put me on the track of the Harmony 676 when I was grousing about having to reprogram my remote to control my new TV set. Harmony's web site had all my components listed and it took one setting at the computer to setup the perfect remote control. I've now lived with it for eight months and still love it. It's so easy to use that even I can get our system to do what ever I want it to. (I used to have to ask my husband to set it up to do anything other than watch TV.) Battery life? By the time the low battery display comes up I've forgotten the last time I changed them. The $199 list price is steep but worth every penny for the ease of use and to throw the six remotes it takes to control my entertainment system in a drawer and forget about them.

Like many people, I got this remote on Christmas day and spent the next couple days cussing about how terrible the Logitech/Harmony website was. They got overrun and the system just wasn't working. Apparently lucky, I managed to get a basic initial setup late on xmas night (~2am), but when I went back to do some tweaking, I couldn't maintain a reliable connection. Now, things seem to be very snappy and the site is working fine. I've made about 4 minor tweaks to my setup and they've all compiled/installed very quickly and easily. I agree with everyone else here that the application should be local, not server based, and that the website layout is a little confusing even when it's running correctly, but let me also recommend to everyone to hang in there. Once set up, this remote is positively wonderful. It's worth the initial effort.

I've used many universals over the years, and they've all ended up stuck in a drawer. This one is a keeper though. The button layout is very well done. My criteria for a good remote is being able to operate it w/out looking down, and I had this one memorized after only a couple days. It would be slightly better if the Forward/Reverse buttons had a slight taper to them (to better identify them by feeling), but I might just fix that with some light sandpaper. :) Once getting used to this one, the TIVO remote (my previous favorite) seems very limited and basic.

After my configuration was all set up, I found one item that really bugged me: the volume control of my Yamaha receiver was too course. If you just tapped the button quickly, you got a big change in volume. Searching the site, I found a LOT of very good technical info in the Troubleshooting FAQ (make sure you read it! You'll be surprised how much stuff you can adjust!). It explained exactly how to adjust the time delay of that function and now my volume controls as accurately as the original remote. The FAQ is also a good road map to find an adjustment feature hidden in the confusing website.

Another point is that the signal strength and field of view of this remote is very, very good. I was concerned about some devices missing their signals and causing things to get out of sync with each other, but the signal is so strong I can actually turn it around and point it behind me and still control most of my devices.

The alternate faceplates are painted in attractive colors - they look fancy, not gaudy. I'm sticking with silver for now, but I like the idea of swapping to blue or red to keep things fresh. This feature had no impact on my purchase decision, but it's still a very nice extra.

You really can adjust almost every aspect of this remote to get it all dialed in just how you like it. I hestitated to give it a full 5 stars due to the annoying (and perhaps sometimes overloaded) website, but decided that the remote itself really does deserve it. I HIGHLY recommend it.

Also, a special thanks to Weldon Dodd for his detailed review here. Your comments were very helpful to me for narrowing down which Harmony model I wanted, and a strong influence on my final decision to get this item. Thanks!

Wow. This unit is all it says it is and more! Set up was easy and it worked like a champ. Some small questions, but customer service was EXCELLENT! I have TIVO, DVD/CD, HiFi, and a VCR in the family room and they (now) work without a fuss on this one remote. The whole family uses it (without any training). I can't say enough, it's too close to perfection. (By the way, its sister model, the 688, is not a good design for TiVo because the keys are too small and easy to miss-hit. I'm glad I exchanged it for the 676.)

I have owned this remote for over a year now, so I have really put it through the test. During this period, I changed TVs, receivers, and DVD players, and each time the online interface tool was simple and flawless in helping step me through the process. I also changed computers, going from a PC to a Mac, and found the software works equally well on both platforms.

Having read some folk's frustrations with the set-up process, I would have to discount these as severely "technonlogy challenged" individuals...the kinds of people who probably had problems figuring out how to turn their electronics on or off with their old remotes...people like my 75 year old mother-in-law who used to call me long-distance to help her figure out how to turn off her sat box and turn on her VCR.

The only issues I have encountered are that sometimes when you press an activity button, such as to watch TV, my Directv sat receiver might not come on. This is usually the first sign that the batteries need replacing. My second issue is that to go from watching TV to watching a DVD, you basically have to power everything off, then power back up with the watch DVD activity button. Since HD TVs take a while to go through a power down, this is a bit of a hassle. But nothing that one can't live with.

On the extremely positive side, aside from the fact that it controls evey device you have and turns them on in the right order and with the right settings to do any activity you want, I love the fact that it is a) backlit (makes it much easier to see and control features when you are watching a movie and have all the lights out!) and b) battery powered (I want my remote to be remote and not always sitting in a charger!). I also like how it asks you questions to see if everything is working properly. If not, it steps you through the process to get everything in sync. I also like the interchangable face plates, although I admit that I have never changed from our red plate since we got the remote...just nice to have the option.

All-in-all, like most Logitech products I have owned, this is a very well designed product with terrific online support and tools. I cannot imagine a better remote for the money.

This is the best remote I've ever had. After two years a few buttons intermittently stop working. I disassembled ( 6 screws ) and cleaned the back of the buttons and the contacts on the pcb with a q tip. It works great again.

1. remove two screws in back top
2. remove batteries, then two screws in battery compartment
3. pry unit apart carefully with small screwdriver or knife
4. remove two screws from pcb near the battery connection
5. pull out pcb and button assembly.
6. clean back of buttons and contacts on pcb with q tip

This was a great remote for about 12 months. Then the buttons used for the DVR stopped working. It was hard to fast forward and stop a recording and finally became almost impossible. Clearly this remote was not made to last.