Logitech Harmony 520 LCD Remote Control
- Type: Universal Learning
- Universal Remote Control Type: Learning
- Broadcasting Type: IR
- Applicable Devices: TV, VCR, DVD Player, CD Player, Lighting
- Devices Controlled: 12
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Great remote, appalling concept.
Pros
Nice design, functional, blue backlights.
Cons
Web-based interface without which the remote is totally useless. Broken buttons after a year.
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
Nice concept, poorly executed. You can't program it to do what YOU want, only what Logitech THINK you want.
I'll preview this review by saying:
Remote - 4 stars
Method of programming remote - zero stars
The Logitech Harmony series of remotes rely on a web-based interface to set up the remote. When reading other reviews, it wasn't clear that this actually means "web interface" not "web-based". ie. it's not that you use your browser and a local piece of software, rather that you have to connect to the internet and set up all the settings on Logitech's servers, then download them into the remote.
This seems like a nice idea - keep the remote code database up to date and such, but it's got one basic problem : Logitech seem to have only one server and I think it's running DOS on a 386 machine. I get constant timeouts, missed connections, dropped lines, corrupted pages and such. The most common page I see in the utility is "heavy traffic, try again later". It's also worth noting that without an internet connection, the remote is a $99 doorstop. You cannot do *anything* to it without the Logitech online service.
It seems to me that if they were going to make something which was wholly reliant on a web service, then the back-end of that service ought to be up to scratch, and in this case it certainly isn't. This spoils your introduction to what is otherwise quite an accomplished remote.
Presuming then that you have 4 hours to spare (that's how long it took me to program it because of their terrible server problems), you'll be presented with a nice slim remote with blue backlighting which attempts to solve the age-old problem of "too many remotes".
The despicable web interface leads you through setting up device types and Logitech seem to have a massive database of IR codes for just about everything ever made. You tell their servers what devices you have and how you want to use them, then the system uploads the data into your remote ready for use.
This remote has the concept of "activities" which are a way of making the remote spew out codes for many devices at once to set them up to do a particular thing. For example "watch DVD" will turn on the DVD player and start it playing, turn on the TV and set it to the right channel, turn on the amp and select the right input etc. It works pretty well but takes some getting used to, and is limited in its scope. For example my projector has to be on and warmed up before it gets a video signal or the auto-calibration doesn't work. The Harmony remote doesn't allow me to put a delay in until *after* everything is turned on, so I can't use their activity function with my projector.
Similarly, you can't re-order the power-on sequence or timing, so whilst the activity mode seems useful on the surface, when you get into it, it's actually pretty limited and not much use in practice. It's better to manually turn on the power and set up the inputs etc yourself.
In "activity" mode, the power button on the remote is an "off" button - ie. it turns all your devices off in a single stroke.
There is a "glow" button on the remote which is useful - it forces the backlight to come on so you can see all the buttons.
In each device mode, the buttons are set up by the software pretty much how you'd expect. One exception is controlling volume whilst on the DVD controls, for example. Using the software, you have to manually assign the volume up and down buttons to your TV or amplifier as the software isn't smart enough to realise that when you're controlling the DVD player, you need the volume commands from a different device. The weird thing is, however, this function DOES exist in activity mode. So if you use "watch a DVD" then it mixes and merges the controls so you have DVD controls and volume controls. But again, unless the activity power up sequence is exactly how you want, you can't have this function.
That sort of describes the whole problem with this remote. It tries to be too clever and doesn't offer enough control for those of us who know what we're doing. It makes the gross assumption that everyone is stupid and that Logitech knows best. That being said, the remote is a lot more useful than the terrible thing that came with my DVD player, and that's really the point of the exercise for me - to have one remote I can control everything with. I could care less about activities and such - they don't work particularly well anyway. So to control multiple devices from one remote - sure this is a great buy for $99. If you want to get clever and do some serious remote programming yourself, a Philips Pronto is probably a better choice.
Dec 28th update.
I'm going to raise the "concept" of this remote to three stars. It seems that everyone in the world got one of these for Christmas, hence the connectivity problems on Dec 25th and 26th. I tried again today and it connected and updated my remote without any problems whatsoever. It's still slow, but at least I didn't have to spend 4 hours consistently typing in my password and hitting "refresh".
One year on
Well it's been a year since I bought this thing and using it has become more irksome by the day. The buttons at the top of the remote have become all but unusable - they click but don't do anything any more. This remote is used perhaps once a week in our entertainment room, so basically after 50 uses, the buttons are dead. More times than I care to remember, it's got stuck in one of its activity modes and messed up my A/V system trying to turn stuff on and off and change modes without me asking it to.
And finally, the online programming system - I'm sorry but after a year I've concluded this is the worst concept in the history of universal remotes. It just plain sucks. It barely ever works and the software is java-based and causes both my PCs to crash randomly when its running now. It seems there was an update mid-year and whatever they did, it broke what little functionality there was. Each time it crashes, I have to reboot and then start the whole piggin' programming process again. I've lowered the rating from my initial review down to 1 star because frankly, I'm fed up with this thing. It's worse after a year than juggling three or four separate remotes. Logitech need their heads seeing to. If this was the main remote for my TV and satellite box, I'd have checked in to the insane asylum by now trying to use it.
Remote - 4 stars
Method of programming remote - zero stars
The Logitech Harmony series of remotes rely on a web-based interface to set up the remote. When reading other reviews, it wasn't clear that this actually means "web interface" not "web-based". ie. it's not that you use your browser and a local piece of software, rather that you have to connect to the internet and set up all the settings on Logitech's servers, then download them into the remote.
This seems like a nice idea - keep the remote code database up to date and such, but it's got one basic problem : Logitech seem to have only one server and I think it's running DOS on a 386 machine. I get constant timeouts, missed connections, dropped lines, corrupted pages and such. The most common page I see in the utility is "heavy traffic, try again later". It's also worth noting that without an internet connection, the remote is a $99 doorstop. You cannot do *anything* to it without the Logitech online service.
It seems to me that if they were going to make something which was wholly reliant on a web service, then the back-end of that service ought to be up to scratch, and in this case it certainly isn't. This spoils your introduction to what is otherwise quite an accomplished remote.
Presuming then that you have 4 hours to spare (that's how long it took me to program it because of their terrible server problems), you'll be presented with a nice slim remote with blue backlighting which attempts to solve the age-old problem of "too many remotes".
The despicable web interface leads you through setting up device types and Logitech seem to have a massive database of IR codes for just about everything ever made. You tell their servers what devices you have and how you want to use them, then the system uploads the data into your remote ready for use.
This remote has the concept of "activities" which are a way of making the remote spew out codes for many devices at once to set them up to do a particular thing. For example "watch DVD" will turn on the DVD player and start it playing, turn on the TV and set it to the right channel, turn on the amp and select the right input etc. It works pretty well but takes some getting used to, and is limited in its scope. For example my projector has to be on and warmed up before it gets a video signal or the auto-calibration doesn't work. The Harmony remote doesn't allow me to put a delay in until *after* everything is turned on, so I can't use their activity function with my projector.
Similarly, you can't re-order the power-on sequence or timing, so whilst the activity mode seems useful on the surface, when you get into it, it's actually pretty limited and not much use in practice. It's better to manually turn on the power and set up the inputs etc yourself.
In "activity" mode, the power button on the remote is an "off" button - ie. it turns all your devices off in a single stroke.
There is a "glow" button on the remote which is useful - it forces the backlight to come on so you can see all the buttons.
In each device mode, the buttons are set up by the software pretty much how you'd expect. One exception is controlling volume whilst on the DVD controls, for example. Using the software, you have to manually assign the volume up and down buttons to your TV or amplifier as the software isn't smart enough to realise that when you're controlling the DVD player, you need the volume commands from a different device. The weird thing is, however, this function DOES exist in activity mode. So if you use "watch a DVD" then it mixes and merges the controls so you have DVD controls and volume controls. But again, unless the activity power up sequence is exactly how you want, you can't have this function.
That sort of describes the whole problem with this remote. It tries to be too clever and doesn't offer enough control for those of us who know what we're doing. It makes the gross assumption that everyone is stupid and that Logitech knows best. That being said, the remote is a lot more useful than the terrible thing that came with my DVD player, and that's really the point of the exercise for me - to have one remote I can control everything with. I could care less about activities and such - they don't work particularly well anyway. So to control multiple devices from one remote - sure this is a great buy for $99. If you want to get clever and do some serious remote programming yourself, a Philips Pronto is probably a better choice.
Dec 28th update.
I'm going to raise the "concept" of this remote to three stars. It seems that everyone in the world got one of these for Christmas, hence the connectivity problems on Dec 25th and 26th. I tried again today and it connected and updated my remote without any problems whatsoever. It's still slow, but at least I didn't have to spend 4 hours consistently typing in my password and hitting "refresh".
One year on
Well it's been a year since I bought this thing and using it has become more irksome by the day. The buttons at the top of the remote have become all but unusable - they click but don't do anything any more. This remote is used perhaps once a week in our entertainment room, so basically after 50 uses, the buttons are dead. More times than I care to remember, it's got stuck in one of its activity modes and messed up my A/V system trying to turn stuff on and off and change modes without me asking it to.
And finally, the online programming system - I'm sorry but after a year I've concluded this is the worst concept in the history of universal remotes. It just plain sucks. It barely ever works and the software is java-based and causes both my PCs to crash randomly when its running now. It seems there was an update mid-year and whatever they did, it broke what little functionality there was. Each time it crashes, I have to reboot and then start the whole piggin' programming process again. I've lowered the rating from my initial review down to 1 star because frankly, I'm fed up with this thing. It's worse after a year than juggling three or four separate remotes. Logitech need their heads seeing to. If this was the main remote for my TV and satellite box, I'd have checked in to the insane asylum by now trying to use it.
