Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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151 of 153 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Harmony 880 Remote Control - Refurbished, November 9, 2007
If you think this remote is just a fancy color display version of other run-of-the-mill universal remotes on the market... then you really need to do more research before you buy this remote. Many of the negative reviews on this unit are because the buyers did not thoroughly understand the concept of the Harmony 880, or how it works, or that you have to program it via your home computer and the Internet! If having to install software on your PC and downloading component device codes is more complexity than you are willing to tackle then this is not a remote for you. Instead you might want to consider something like the 8-DEVICE Learning Upgradeable Universal Remote or the One for All URC 8910 Universal Remote Control.
You should also know that the Harmony 880 has been around for several years. By todays standards, and with the advent of high-resolution color displays found on most cell phones, the low-resolution display of the Harmony 880 may seem a little lackluster. Understanding this before you purchase may save you some disappointment. With that said, while there are newer Harmony models like the Logitech Harmony 890 Advanced Universal Remote Control or the Logitech Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote the Harmony 880 continues to be one of the top selling universal remotes regardless of its older technology low resolution display.
You should also understand the Harmony 880 is an IR (infrared) line of sight unit. In other words it must be pointed at the device you are attempting to control. You cannot use it from another room and it may not function properly if you are pointing the 880 at the ceiling or the floor. If you need a remote that will work around corners, from another room, or when pointed in any direction... you need a RF (radio frequency) remote like the Logitech Harmony 890 Advanced Universal Remote Control.
As to the problems and complaints over defective charging base units... if you surf the web you will soon discover that years ago the original release of the 880 had a lot of problems with the charging base. The manufacturer went thru several redesigns of the base (and hundreds of upset customers) until they finally (only recently) got the design right. I received my Harmony 880 refurbished unit from Amazon in October 07 and it included the newest version of the charging base. The refurbished unit I received looked brand new in every way, works great every single time and I have not had a single issue or problem of any kind with the base charging unit.
Also, as to any concern you may have on buying a refurbished unit... if you check the review dates of the people giving the more negative reviews you will see the majority of them occurred in the May/June 2007 time frame. My guess is this is when Amazon first began to offer the refurbished units. One can only assume that Amazon worked with Logitech to resolve the earlier issues with the charging base. That said, the vast majority of the more current reviews (August 2007 on)... have been very positive. In regards to purchasing a refurbished unit... if you buy a "New" Logitech Harmony 880 Advanced Universal Remote Control it only comes with a one year warranty. If you buy the refurbished unit for $99 you can also purchase the 2-Year Replacement Plan for Electronics Products $75 to $99.99 for $19.99. So... you end up with a 880 with a 2 year warranty! (NOTE: The 2 Year Replacement Plan is not a repair warranty per se but actually a refund of the purchase price.) In other words if your unit fails during the two year period, you send in your defective remote and they will send you a check for the purchase price of $99.00.) I figure if it fails I can use the money to buy another remote or apply the refund towards a newer model.
If by the off chance you should receive a defective unit... (new or refurbished) any regular customer of Amazon knows Amazon will replace the unit in a flash or refund your money. As to the Logitech 1-800 support desk, yes you can experience delays in getting thru to an operator (as you do with most 800 support desk numbers), but once you get thru they are very helpful and will send you replacement parts when needed.
You should also know that some people complain about the little buttons on the 880 especially the ones located around the display. Others complain about the placement of the DVR/VCR controls. NET: Study the photos of the 880 to see if you could live with the buttons. If not, you might want to consider the Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote (although it has a monochrome, i.e., black & white, display). If you like the button placement of the 550 but want a color display like the 880 then you might consider the Logitech Harmony 720 Universal Remote.
Last... my wife hated having 5 remotes on the coffee table and she could never figure out which remote did what. Whenever she wanted to watch a movie or listen to music when I was away from home she would have to call me so I could step her through the remotes. When I was home I would have to stop what I was doing to set everything up. Those days are now behind us thanks to the Harmony 880. My wife absolutely loves it! She can now operate any device in our home theater or entertainment system with the push of a button.
When reading reviews keep in mind more people tend to complain when a unit is defective but are less apt to report when everything is great. Bottom line... thi five star rating is well deserved. If you do your research you will also discover this remote is hard to beat for the price.
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Harmony through the Harmony, May 25, 2007
The Harmony could not have a more apt name, it brings harmony to your entire home entertainment system. In my case 6 remotes are now tucked away in the drawer and only the Harmony remains to control it all.
The best part of the Harmony is not that it simply replaces the remotes you already have, after all any simple budget universal remote (that costs a fair amount less) can do that. Where the Harmony exceeds it that it is an intelligent remote. Yes it will act as a bridge to replace all your other remotes, but the Harmony is smarter than even that--it brings interaction between all the remotes. Through setting up of activities, you simply need to press a single button on the Harmony and it will do every single command action necessary to bring up the viewing mode that you desire to do--Press "watch TiVo" for example and the Harmony will turn on your TV if it is off, will cycle the TV to the correct input, turn on the TiVo if necessary, turn on a audio receiver if necessary, set the audio receiver to the input it needs to be on, and though that may sound complicated as you think of all the steps--it's all automated, to you it's just a button press away. Then if you tire of watching live TV and want to watch say a DVD, press your watch DVD activity and the harmony will change the input on the TV to what it needs to be, turn off the tivo (If you've set it to do so), switch the audio receiver input as need be, turn on the DVD player, and (if you set it up to do so) even eject the dvd tray for you so you just need to walk over put something in and retract the tray.
And it's not hard at all to set this up: simply attach the Harmony via the included USB cable to your computer, fire up the Harmony software, and the software will guide you through setting up your entire home entertainment center, all you need to know is the make and model of all your components. The software will search it's massive online database of devices, download the configuration, and set up most everything automatically for you. I did not run into a single device that the Harmony software didn't have database info for, and that included a 10 year old VCR.
Don't like how the software pre-configured the remote layout for one of your devices, or the way it goes about activating an activity? No problem, the software lets you fine tune and adjust every little action that you can think of. You can change the assignment of commands to any of the Harmony's hard buttons, and you can configure the "soft buttons"(the commands that show up on the LCD) to whatever you like, rearrange them as you like--whatever. It's brilliant. There's nothing really to say short of that this device was thought out--and thought out well. It can handle most any different ways that your devices do things. (for example it has different modes for chaning inputs on the TV, use the one that your TV's included remote uses. Does your TV have direct buttons to each input? Harmony can control that. Does it have one button that cycles through the inputs? Harmony can control that too, and it always remembers the input it left the TV on for the next time you choose an activity to switch inputs).
The versatility is astounding. If you like tweaking, you'll love this remote. Yes you can have it up in running in 10 minutes about if you're happy with all the default configuration--but if you want to tweak so it's exactly how you want it--you may end up spending additional hours getting everything just right. But the great thing is that you CAN get it jsut right, it is fully customizable.
What the harmony does not have hard buttons for, can be set up in the LCD soft buttons. The LCD is a small rectangular color screen, with four buttons on each side (for a total of 8). When you switch to an activity or a device it switches the screen to the soft buttons you set up for that activity or device. one command enxt to each button, for a total of 8 commands per page. But don't worry if you have more, because there are previous page and next page buttons on the harmony that let you scroll through more pages of commands if you have that many you want to use.
The 880 has a built in motion gyroscope. The Harmony turns off the LCD after a few seconds of non-use to conserve batteries. But the gyroscope allows the remote to detect when it's been lifted and tilted, meaning that everytime you pick up the remote, if the screen is off, it will instantly light up just for you. (But don't worry, if that doesn't sound appealing to you, you can turn this feature off in the software just like anything else! There's a "glow" button that can be pressed to manually light the screen in that case)
The 880 has the advantage of coming with a included base station/cradle. When you place the 880 in its cradle, it automatically begins to recharge the battery. The base station is a nice looking horizontal cradle, with a depression that is molded to fit the entire horizontal bottom of the remote. The cradle also has a round Logitech logo in the middle of it, which is surrounded by a translucent plastic ring which glows blue when the cradle has been attached to the AC adapter, so you know that it has power. Placing the 880 in the cradle is no harder than simply laying it down horizontally upon the cradle (so the LCD and button side of the remote is up). That's it.
If you're wondering if the Harmony has support for controlling your device--ask yourself this: Is the original remote for the device infared? If the answer is yes, then the answer is that most probably to the point of definitely the Harmony supports it. It most likely will be in the Logitech software database, but even if it is not, the Harmony is also a learning remote--it has a IR receiver on the bottom of the remote. If there is no pre-existing configuration for your device in the database, you can simply go through a wizard for having the Harmony learn all your original remotes commands. That process only involves aligning the front of your original remote with the sensor on the bottom of the Harmony, and pressing the appropriate buttons and clicking through wizard on the Harmony's website. Be wary of devices that use RF for their remotes, as the 880 does not have the ability to control RF--not without help. Some devices such as home environmental systems have optional devices you can purchase that will accept IR commands (from the Harmony for example) and then the device will translate that into RF commands. That would be an additional purchase of course, but it's worth looking into if you find yourself in that situation.
I cannot speak any more highly about Logitech's customer support. I had to contact them on a couple issues, and my experience was a great joy. One was a configuration issue, which was that my TV simply did something in a certain way that is out of the usual and not easily setup through the Harmony software (I believe this was really a fluke case though). I contact Logitech about this problem and within a couple of days a very courteous and helpful technician responded saying that they had altered my Harmony setup online to rectify the problem, and to simply reconnect my remote and update it, and it should work properly now. Which I did. And it worked first go! The other issue I has was that in my package from Amazon I received the wrong USB cable.. I believe this was also a major fluke. Logitech not only agreed to send me a replacement USB cable, but they did it no questions asked, and free of charge, and I received it about a week later. Great company--great product.
There is only one thing you probably should be mindful of with the 880, which is that there are two versions of the cradle. The original cradles had a known problem that made charging very difficult and inconsistent (As in the remote would not charge most of the time as it didn't make proper contact). Logitech released a revised cradle that solved this problem. I've had no problems charging, so I believe I received the new one. If you do have problems--please don't give up. First try cleaning the charging contacts on the cradle and remote with a small amount of rubbing alcohol, if that doesn't help, then get in touch with Logitech right away! They'll make it right and send you a new cradle right away. (I've read about this problem on a few message forums, and in all cases Logitech always took care of it).
So it goes without saying I highly recommend this remote. I balked at first too about paying so much for a remote, but I couldn't be happier with my decision to give it a try. Once you use the Harmony you realize it is so much more than a regular universal remote--it really shouldn't even be compared with the run of the mill average universal remotes. If you're in the market for unifying your home theatre experience, or if you simply just want to retire a mess of remotes that you have to juggle, give this remote a very serious consideration, I think it'd be hard to be displeased.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Harmony 880 Refurbished charging problem, December 15, 2008
I recently purchased the refurbished 880 and was not able to get it to take a charge. I tried the solutions posted on the internet to no avail and upon calling Logitech was shipped a replacement unit. The replacement unit was also a refurbished one. While waiting for the replacement I learned that a coworker owned a 880 and his was not refurbished. He said it charged fine. When the 880 arrived I once again tried to charge it and I thought it might be charging since the little red battery indicator in the upper right flashed occasionally. However, after being on the cradle overnight it was dead as a doornail. The display was black. I had the inspiration to see if my co worker could charge it and I gave it to him to try. He brought it back the next day fully charged - "No problem", he said. Well, we both brought our chargers to work today and I measured the cradle output voltage of each. Sure enough the refurbished unit only produced 4.6 volts compared to 8.7 from the "good" one. I still have the original 880 cradle they shipped me, since they didn't want it back, and it also is producing 4.6 volts. So something is clearly wrong with the cradle charging circuit. If your unit doesn't charge and you have a meter then a quick check will save you a lot of time pursuing solutions that don't work. The cradle label says it should produce 8 volts. Now I just have to call Logitech yet again, hopefully they will send me a good one this time.
In general I like the way the software works. So no complaints there, just on the hardware.
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