Logitech Harmony 1000 Universal Remote

In June 2007, I purchased a Logitech Harmony 525 remote from eBuyer. Simply put, it’s a universal remote. It takes all your five million existing remotes and crams them into one simple remote that can control pretty much anything via IR. However, since I recently got a new TV, I wanted the 525 in my bedroom for my use, so I suggested to my dad that he get another one for the TV downstairs. One week later, the Harmony 1000 arrived from eBuyer.

The 1000 is a rather high-end universal remote that can control up to 15 devices. That might not seem a lot, but think about it, if you have a TV, projector, screen, AV receiver, BluRay player, HDDVD player, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, HTPC, DVD recorder, and a DTV/cable/satellite box, well…that’s already a lot of devices, and that’s only 11. Throw in a dimmer for your lights, and that brings it up to 12 devices – for a dedicated home cinema setup, 15 devices is more then enough.

So, the 1000. It’s Logitech’s top of the line model, and the first thing you notice about it, is that it’s not shaped like the average remote. This is both a good and bad thing. You kind of need two hands to control it, but I think it’s a good size, and it’s very light too. I was expecting it to be heavy, but it’s not at all heavy. It also has a 3.5″ touch-screen, which is a very unique feature, and a very useful one too. The touch-screen is used for activity-specific controls, however there are still your usual physical buttons. To the right of the touch screen, you have volume, channel, back, mute, previous, next, and the usual up/down/left/right/OK pad. Below the touch-screen is the Activities button, and on the top left is the power button. On the side is a USB port, and on the back is the flap for the battery, plus a small speaker (which is pretty useless, since it just beeps at you sometimes, but you can mute it). The 1000 also feels a lot more solid then the 525 does. The 525 feels like I could easily snap it in half, whereas the 1000 feels very solid.

So, setup time. As I already had an existing remote, all I had to do was plug in the 1000 to my PC, start the Logitech software, and hit “I have a new remote”, make a few tweaks, and it was done. However, since most people would most likely be starting off from scratch, I’ll explain that. When you first get a Harmony remote, you’ll be instructed to install Logitech’s software. Let me just say, if you have a Windows PC handy, please, do it on that. The Mac software is HORRIBLE. It dumps files all over the place, and for some reason it’s always refused to let me enter text into the text boxes. So, use Windows if you can.

Upon installing the software, it checks for updates, then goes online. You’ll have to login to the control panel, which you can then configure the remote on. Again, this is something I find annoying – sure, it’s great if you often swap around PCs, but it means you HAVE to be online when you configure it, and it means every page has to be loaded off the net. Anyway, once you’re logged in, you add your devices. Logitech say they have support for 175,000+ devices, which seems to be right – they have tons of options available. If your stuff isn’t supported, no problem – all the models have an IR receiver at the bottom of the remote, which you can train remotes into.

Mostly, though, it’s easy to find your products. Their software found all of my stuff – both our TVs, the Sky+HD boxes, my PS3, HDDVD player, and the AV reciever. Once you’ve added the devices you have, you then move on to setting up “Activities”. For our setup, this involves:

• Sky+HD: Turns on TV, Sky+HD box and the AV receiver, and puts them on the correct inputs.
• PlayStation 3: Turns on TV, PS3 and the AV receiver, and puts them on the correct inputs. To be more specific, it sends commands to the PS3, but they won’t work since the PS3 only accepts Bluetooth remotes. You need something like IR2BT for the PS3 to work with an IR remote.
• HDDVD: Turns on TV, HDDVD player and the AV receiver, and puts them on the correct inputs.
• CD: Turns on HDDVD player and the AV receiver, and puts them on the correct inputs.
• AirTunes: Turns on AV receiver and puts it on the correct input. I use my iPhone with the “Remote” app to control iTunes on my PC for this, as I’m not forking out another £60 for Logitech’s IR blaster thing to put upstairs and point at my PC.
• Radio: Turns on AV receiver and puts it on the FM input.

Now, this is by far the best aspect of the remote. It turns everything on in about 5 seconds, whereas if I was to do that manually, it would take about 30 seconds to switch it all on, find the right inputs, and then be ready. Turning them all off is equally as easy, you just hit the power button on the remote. Switching activities is also simple – if I’m watching an HDDVD, for example, and I decide to watch some TV, I click the activities button, tap Sky+HD, and the remote switches the HDDVD player off, the Sky+HD box on, and switches inputs on the TV and AV receiver. Simple!

Now, the touch screen. When I choose a specific activity, such as Radio, the touch screen on the 1000 displays only stuff related to that activity. I don’t, for example, get play/pause/rewind/fast-forward buttons on the Radio activity, because you can’t do that – whereas in the Sky+HD activity, you can.

Now, you might wonder “what about the number buttons? and anything else?”. Well, when you’re in an activity, you get two “pages” of commands, as you can see here:

As you can see, it’s very clear and easy to use, but one thing I don’t like is the fact that the colour buttons, and the Guide / Info / Exit buttons aren’t very big. If you have fat fingers, don’t buy this. Also, I’m not using the Menu button, so why not hide it completely instead of greying it out?

Another useful feature on the remote is that you can setup channel icons for favourite channels. What do I mean, you ask? Well, take a look:

If I tap one of those icons, it simply sends the channel number to the Sky+HD box. Simple, yet a nice touch. However, it’s a bit laggy to load because the remote has to load the jpg files, and it’s limited to 3 pages. Ideally, I’d like to have at least 5 pages of favourites, but you can’t. The icons I used are from a very good site I found recently: http://www.iconharmony.com/icons/

Anyway, that’s about it for now. To summarize:

Pros:

• Very good quality hardware overall.
• Light.
• Clear, bright, easy to use touch screen.
• Hardware buttons are quiet, and don’t make a loud clicking sound like some remotes do.
• Activities make controlling multiple devices super-easy.
• Favourite channel icons.
• Rechargeable battery.
• Software is pretty easy to use (but you will want to set aside at least 30 minutes to get everything setup correctly the first time).
• Provides individual control of devices if you need to (eg, you can still access the TV menu control or whatever else you need from a specific device).
• All the visible buttons can be customized.

Cons:

• More expensive then an Xbox 360.
• Slightly laggy at times.
• The screen isn’t the best quality ever, however it’s fine for it’s designed use.
• Software requires you to be online to use it, and sucks on OS X.
• You can’t customize any of the graphics, such as the background image, whatsoever. You also can’t remove unused buttons, such as the menu button I mentioned earlier.
• You can’t add more then 3 pages of Favourite Channels.
• It does take a bit of getting used to if you’re used to normal-shaped remotes.

Overall, I’d give it 7/10. If you absolutely need it, then get it, otherwise I would suggest either the Harmony One, or the Harmony 785.

At times, I can’t help but feel that the 1000 still needs more work in places. Take note, Logitech.