Customer Reviews

Logitech Harmony H-688 Universal Remote Control (Silver)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've been looking for a universal remote for a few years - and purchased a few - but they were always lacking something. The Phillips Pronto was not tactile enough, "universal" remotes either weren't or you needed to spend hours trying out remote codes for your 10 year old VCR or your three day old TV.

That ended with the Harmony Remote. After entering the model numbers of my devices (RCA TV (no, not 3 days old), Sony receiver, Mitsubushi VCR (yes, >10 years old), Sony DirecTivo, Sony DVD - Note: spend a little time writing all of this down before you start - Logitech even provides a workbook in the documentation), I hooked up the remote to the USB port on my computer and it worked. It wasn't perfect (user error), but that was quickly fixed.

The true test was having someone who has never operated our equipment before come over and give it a test run and it worked out great.

Things I would note: if you turn on something manually, turn it off manually. It's not perfect, but what is?

Update 11/07/08
It has now been three years and I am still in love with this remote. So much so that I have since bought two other Logitech Universal remotes!!!

I love that fact that even as update my equipment at home the remote easily adapts to any changes I make.

This product is one that is clearly designed to last and easily adapt with my changing entertainment system.

I must say that this universal remote is truly amazing!!!! I have had it now for about 6 months and I am still very impressed.

I have 8 different components - all different brands. This remote has been able to control them all. (Two of the units are multifunction units)

Pros:

*my non-techno savvy boy-friend actually understands how to use this remote to run our entire home theater system.

* pressing one button turns on everything I need for a given activity. It also switches the TV and receiver to the proper outputs

* It even controls my tower fan and my media center computer

* I no longer need 7 remotes

* I can use it to preform fairly complex functions that before I could only do with the original remote from the component.

* The battery life has been excellent

Cons:

*the Harmony database had incorrect codes for my Toshiba HDD/DVD recorder. (However I was able to 'teach' the remote the correct commands.

*buttons are way too small

I've had this remote for about 2 weeks now and really appreciate the ease that it provides for working all of my electronic pieces. I have a cable box, satellite dish, TIVO, DVD player, Stereo, Satellite radio and CD jukebox. The internet setup was nice and easy, but when things get a little complicated or you have little issues like component inputs not changing correctly or timely, you turn to Logitech support. The support was the best I have experienced for any electronic item that I have ever purchased. The Rep literally spent 45 minutes on the phone with me fine tuning every aspect of the remote. It now works perfectly for every piece. I only have 2 knocks.

1. Reviewers are right in saying that the activity buttons are too small.
2. The sensitivity and speed of the infrared commands are not as quick as the remote that I replaced. (Sony RM-VL1000)

I'd buy this remote again and I'm very interested in checking out the Logitech 880 which I hear is very sweet.

Like most A/V enthusiasts, I have many devices to control.

A/V Equiptment:
- TV
- DVD
- VCR
- LaserDisc (yes they still exist!)
- TiVo
- HP MP3 Jukebox
- Cablebox
- Xbox

The Harmony remote setup program makes it very easy to program the device. I got home and had it setup in about 20 minutes. It took me longer to find and write down all the model numbers from the various components than it did to program the remote. After entering your devices, the wizard asks you some simple question about how you watch DVDs etc to program the Activities buttons. Once you answer those quests, voila you are done.

Buttons are well placed around the center of the remote. The LCD it easily readable, the backlit display does not stay on long, I imagine that the battery will not drain too quickly.

The only negative comment I would have is regarding the wizard, why do I need to type the model number. There should be a drop down in my numble opinion.

I highly recommend this to any A/V enthusiast.

I have two of these remotes which I purchased about a year ago and for the most part have been happy with them.

My initial impression was very positive. The layout is pretty good and the backlighting is very bright. Most buttons are in logical locations and using the remote with one hand is fairly easy.

I do have a minor issue with the function selector buttons at the top because they are unreadable in the dark (the backlighting doesn't shine through those buttons) and not very easy to read even in the light. Once you memorize which ones do what (or which colors do what) it's no big deal, but you'll still be turning on lights and squinting to find the ones you don't use very often.

The other buttons are pretty easy to find, especially when you hit the backlight button (which is in a convenient location near the middle of the remote). I'd like it better if there was some tactile difference among the buttons in the big ring though since they're so tiny and difficult to tell apart by touch. The same with the playback control buttons, they all feel the same in the dark so finding Play versus Pause usually means turning on the backlight for me.

The web setup isn't too difficult initially, but changing things once you've gone through their setup wizard is a bit of a pain. Not horrible, but not easy either -- it took me a while to figure out how to remove my old amplifier from the setup and use my new one instead. Should you ever need to replace your remote (see below :) then it's easy to just plug another one in and download the configuration from the website.

Battery life has been pretty decent, even with rechargable NiMHs, but the remote gives little warning of low batteries. The backlight stays bright and there's no indication that the batteries are getting low except that my devices start having trouble receiving commands. So every couple of months I find myself getting frustrated that my devices aren't responding well and then eventually thinking maybe it's the batteries (which it usually is). Once I replace them everything is happy again.

The reason I only give the remote a 3 is that several buttons on both of my H688 remotes have either stopped working entirely or require a lot of pressure to engage. This is terrible, especially in a modern and expensive remote -- even my cheap remotes don't usually have key failures unless I drop them in a soda or something. I took one apart to see if it was just dust or something and found that Logitech uses little metal dome buttons on the circuit board. I suspect that this type of button oxidizes over time and loses conductivity. Cheaper remotes use a simple and relatively large conductive pad that presses down on plated contacts on the circuit board. Logitech's buttons give you that nice clicky feel when you push them, but I'd trade the clicky feel for quiet, squishy, but reliabile cheap buttons any day. Remotes costing this much just shouldn't become unusuable after only a year or so worth of use.

Simple, easy and compact. Controls all audio/video equipment by merely loading in model numbers, INCLUDING CABLE BOX - and a snap to set up from web site. The only negatives are that the buttons are a wee bit small and some of the terms on the web site are confusing but the toll free assistance makes it a breeze. I'm completly satisfied after using it for a month.

I had a lot of expectations from a new remote control that I had been planning to buy for a long time. I could not find one single remote that would work on all the devices that I had. Fortunately, my friend bought a Harmony remote and during a casual conversation told me about some of the features. I am a person who browses the Internet for a signifcant part of my day. So for me the biggest selling point was the ability to configure it over the Internet. Honestly, after my friend told me that I could set it up using the Internet, I did not even look for compatibility with my components or any other features. For me, just this one feature was good enough to go for it.

Now, you have to understand that I have several components. Like I said earlier, I was skeptical that this remote would be able to do it (I only bought it because of the Internet setup ability). I have the following equipment in my living room that had a total of 8 remote controls-

1. Toshiba TV
2. Panasonic 5 disc DVD player
3. SONY PS2 Game Console
4. Dish Network PVR
5. Direct TV Satellite Reciever (where I get International Channels)
6. Harmon Kardon Reciever
7. Samsung High Definition Set-Top-Box
8. SONY VCR

I have a little bit of a unique situation, in that I have two satellitle recievers (one from Dish Network and the other from Direct TV). I get the international channels from DirectTV while I get the regular programming from Dish Network. So far, I hadn't found one universal remote control that allowed me to setup two satellite recievers into one remote. I guess they all assumed that no individual will ever have satellite service from competing companies. Another challenge was that a lot of universal remotes did not have the capability to control my HD set-top-box (I guess this is a newer type of equipment). The more expensive did have these capabilities, but I did not see myself paying $300+ for a remote.

So I bought this remote from Amazon about 3 months ago. I wanted to make sure I tried out all features over a period of time, before writing a review. I was able to setup the basic remote functions in about 20 minutes. The remote was correctly able to control all 8 devices after the basic setup. Then I tried some of the advanced features (like adding custom buttons and activities). It all worked like a charm. I have to say that the web-site is really easy to use and I got up-to-speed right away.

I was so impressed with this remote that I ended up buying another one (a 659), for my family room equipment, within two weeks. The only issue when you have two harmony remotes is that you have to manage each remote through a separate account (which is not a big problem).

If I would change anything in this remote, it would be -
1. Make a buttons a little bit bigger
2. Initially it was a challenge to use the buttons with thier unique layout, but within a week I got used to them
3. Have a hard button for the "." key. I have had to use the "+" button for this. This feature would be really helpful, with the HD TVs and tuners since the digital channels use decimals.

All-in-all one of the most useful $$, I have spent in a long time.

I wanted to provide you some feedback on my experiences with the harmony 688 remote control after working with it for 2 days. I have used multiple high end remotes and working with the harmony my experiences have been both positive and negative:

Pros:
- Great feel, very similar to a TIVO remote which has an excellent feel in your hands
- Good button layout with logical names on the hard buttons.
- Most common functions are under your thumb and it only requires one hand to operate
- Crisp LCD display with good backlighting on the LCD and hard buttons.

Cons:
- Hard buttons are a little small or my fingers are a little large...
- Very slow to configure via the web softare.
- Web codes are for general MFG remote, not specific to the model product you select. For example, when you specify a model of TV, DVD, etc... general DVD codes from that MFG are loaded by default. There are no specific codes and filtered features for your model DVD. This requires additional removal of un-useable commands from your configuration.
- Lacks faster paths allowing advanced users to configure the remote (or they are hidden) I found the wizards to be cumbersom to use and they really didn't configure the remote for my full use. (Example, it took me 2 hours of using the wizard to get my TV to automatically switch to the right input source (its a samsung so it's a little tricky due to how many steps are required.) vs. 10 minutes with other remote brands. An advanced view removing the wizards could simplify this.
- Useless help feature on the remote, when the remote doesn't work right there are too many prompts to use the help feature which hasn't solved any issue so far for me. This option seems like a nice to have in the furture but doesn't provide real value today.
- Ability to carry customization from a device directly to an activity. Example, once you configure your button layout for a DVD player, it would be really nice to carry that button layout to the WATCH A MOVIE activity. I've spent more time remapping the same layouts between the device and activity then I would care to mention.

Outside of these cons, I think they have a good product. It appears they are improving the web site to be more user friendly and they have a really good piece of hardware. Overall its a good remote with opportunity to be great with some adjustments to their web site.

Is it a good remote? Simply, yes.
Is it worth $130? Hmm, debatable.
Is it everything it's cracked up to be? I don't think so.

Let me start by saying that I've been in the CE industry in all aspects (Sales, purchasing, training) for about 15yrs. I really thought this remote was going to be a blast to set-up with the PC programming ability. Unfortunately, I found it a little confusing to say the least.

First, my (parents) DELL wouldn't recognize the remote. I must have spent approximately 1 hour trying to get the PC to just recognize it (sure this could've been a PC issue as well, but it was still an issue). Finally, the PC recognized the remote and I swear to this minute I have no idea what I did to get it to recognize. However, once the remote was initially recognized I didn't have any issues again any time I disconnected the cable and reconnected.

The online set-up was fairly simple and all of my parents A/V products were listed (even a Yamaha receiver over 12yrs old). Basic set-up was relatively easy, however, customization leaves alot to be desired. Luckily, my parents just needed a basic set-up. If any customization would've been necessary (beyond what I did anyway), I would've easily spent another 2 hours or so just trying to figure out the best way to go about it.

The customization programming available via the website just confused me. I really found it non-intuitive in a major way. Sure the LCD labels can be changed to say and do what you want, but how do you assign the location of it on the LCD and program the custom function? Stuff like that REALLY bothered me. I thought it would've been WAY easy compared to the number of remotes I've had to manually learn and program each button in the past. Unfortunately, I almost longed for that experience after setting up this remote.

I was very pleased with some aspects of the remote though for my parents sake. They are not very saavy with remotes and the newer products coming out. This remote (once programmed with components in A/V system) makes it very easy to switch between functions. Pressing "Play a DVD" button - turns on TV, Receiver, DVD player and switches inputs on each device to correct setting. Pressing "Watch TV" afterward will turn off devices not necessary for that function and turn on the ones needed (satellite receiver and switch TV input again). I thought that was cool and it makes things much easier for my parents.

So, for basic functions being used, the remote is great and I give it a high 4. But with the custom programming confusion I experienced, I can only give it a 3 (which I think is generous compared to what others have given it).

One last thing, there is a "Media" button dead center on the remote with no function I could find. I looked all over to see if I could even program a function to it, but it doesn't show up ANYWHERE in the programming features. Why have a button that doesn't do anything? ...stupid. I have a ton of Logitech products (G15 Keyboard, MX1000 Laser Mouse, Joystick...etc.) and I must say, I expected more from them. At least this remote is backlit on the entire remote for nighttime use (unlike there "top of the line" 880 remote).

This is one of the greatest products I've ever used. It is so simple to set up, and so easy to use, even my mother can operate the home theater now without a problem. It even has support for Pronto Codes, if a function for your device is not already in the database. The one drawyback with that is you have to e-mail them the code, and it takes about a week for them to put it in. Other than that, I HIGHLY recommend any of the Harmony remotes.