Best Universal remote? (1 Viewer)

[Jon Sciabica]

I am looking to purchase the Logitech Harmony 688S for a friend who wants to control all of her components. Simplicity is key. Are there any other remotes I should consider at this price or lower?

 

[Ted Lee]

for simplicity, i do think the harmony remotes are the best. there are other remotes which may be more powerful or (subjectively speaking) "better" ... but they're usually more difficult to program.

with a harmony; connect it to your pc, download all your codes, and you're done. nice!

 

[Dean_S]

I second the Harmony vote. I have a 688 and I love it. I will be buying an 880 and moving the 688 to another room as soon as the price on the 880 comes down a bit. The 688 is easy to find for around $150 (MSRP is $250). MSRP on the 880 is $250 and eventually will be available cheap too.

 

[Jon Sciabica]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Orderded it today.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

The Harmony 688 is a great choice.

The secret to the Harmony is 2 parts:

- Activities
- It remembers the state of your equipment

Most universal remotes make you push a button for TV/DVD/CATV box/HT Receiver, and then the buttons all switch to controlling that device.

The Harmony CAN do this, but insted of "Device" buttons at the top, it has ACTIVITIES.

After it knows your equipment, it picks some very good defaults for "Watch TV", "Watch DVD", "Listen To Music".

The remote automatically turns things on and switches the various inputs. Then the buttons (there are a lot of them) now map to a mix of controls.

In my system, when I choose "Watch TV", the volume control adjusts the TV volume.

When I choose "Watch DVD", the volume controls the volume on my HT reciever.

The default values are very intuitive and require little customization.

But you can customize the controls with some PC software that comes included. It's a little quirky at first, but soon you realize how simple it is.

And the remote has 6 buttons at the top than you can customize for any function not already on the remote.

For example, people with a Tivo or Personal Video Recorder often have 1 button on the original remote that jumps them to a menu of already recorded shows. Another button to look at the up-coming events to record. It was a simple matter to type in 2 labels and map 2 buttons to each of these. (A menu of every possible command for every one of my devices sits next to each button on the software. You just pick which command you want to assign to the button from a list. No code numbers)

Highly recommended.

Mine cost me $117 using a shopping comparison site.