![]() You’ll Have to Pry It From My Cold, Dead Fingers Fortunately, though, you can rearrange the order of Activities at any time. It’s extremely annoying to toggle through two or three pages of Devices to reach the AVR’s control pages just so you can switch surround modes. Why is this important? Because you can’t go back and change the order of the Devices after you’ve added them. It lists them three at a time on its touchscreen when the remote is in Device mode. It’s important to give some thought to the order in which you’ll add Devices because this determines the order in which the Harmony One lists them. The programming process begins with adding Devices. As a matter of fact, one of the remote’s hidden strengths is its ability to make those tweaks. While this makes first-time setup almost a brainless endeavor, it can be painfully slow to endure once you’ve become an expert with the remote and want to make a few small tweaks, such as setting up delay times between commands. It lets you create Devices (the individual components you want to control) and design Activities (simple or complex sequences of remote commands, called macros by remote control geeks, that are initiated by a single button press). The Harmony software asks a series of questions and uses your answers to guide you through the process of programming the remote. Logitech also keeps the latest configuration of your remote on its servers, so if your remote loses its mind, you can restore it to its rightful self easily and quickly. When you register your remote and set up a free account with Logitech, you get instant online access to the company’s Brobdingnagian database of remote control codes (225,000-plus devices from more than 5,000 manufacturers). To program the Harmony One, you’ll need an Internet connection and Logitech’s Harmony Remote Software running on either a Mac or a Windows PC. This makes it environmentally friendly, and it won’t force you to buy a new remote when the battery finally expires. By the way, the rechargeable battery is removable and replaceable, much like a cordless phone’s battery. ![]() ![]() This one has a deeper well that ensures a solid connection between the contact points on the remote and the charging cradle. My older Harmony 890 is sometimes finicky and refuses to make contact-and therefore doesn’t charge-when resting in its cradle. ![]() To recharge the battery, just place the remote in its horizontal charging cradle. It’s not super sensitive, though, so sometimes you’ll need to give the remote a quick shake to bring it to life. The Harmony One includes a built-in motion sensor that’s supposed to wake the remote when you pick it up. Although the individual keys are only slightly larger than those on an average remote, each has its own unique shape and is spaced far enough apart so that you can easily use the remote for basic operations without looking at it. The backlit hard keys are distinctly grouped together by function (transport, numeric keypad, etc.). At the business end is a bright 1.25-by-1.5-inch color touchscreen with enough resolution that you can easily recognize the tiny DVD logo on the DVD player icon. The Harmony One is as narrow as most single-device remotes, but it’s thinner and surprisingly light. It looks great, is easy to program, and is sweetly simple to use. The Harmony One is another in its long list of affordable universal remote controls. I don’t know what they put in the water cooler at Logitech, but I want to start drinking it. Programmable power-on, inter-key, inter-device delays.Help function uses questions and answers to fix system problems.With those caveats in mind, here are our current picks for the best universal remote.Price: $250 At A Glance: Exceptionally intuitive If you have an AV receiver and multiple sources, however, it gets more complicated. With a smart TV connected to a soundbar and a game console, for example, you can control streaming apps, audio and device switching from a single remote (the TV's), eliminating the need for a universal remote. Many entertainment systems today don't have as many separate devices as in the past, so you might not even need a universal remote. A number of cheap replacement clickers are available too, but we can't recommend them because we haven't tested them yet.Įven with the emergence of SofaBaton, the universal remote category is still less popular than before. And the Roku and Fire TV clickers, while great for controlling those streaming devices, respectively, as well as most brands of TV, don't really qualify as "universal" remotes in the classic sense. The outgoing Fire TV Cube is expensive and more of a hybrid Alexa speaker/streamer than a universal remote, although it will also control your devices. So what's left? Among remotes, we can recommend based on hands-on testing, not much.
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