Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-30 of 603
 A great concept badly engineered November 5, 2007
Geoff Miller (Kanata, Ontario)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
The Harmony 550 is an "all right" but not a great universal remote. For the price tag it demands, there are better options.
Shortcomings:
(1) Ergonomics -- the buttons are just plain too small. And if the size of the buttons isn't trouble enough, the non-spatial row of buttons design is a second cause for annoyance. In other words, you never get an intuitive feel for the button layout, and it results in daily occurence of user error...even after 8 months of ownership. And it's nearly impossible to navigate with the lights in the room dimmed.
(2) Ease of configuration -- you can get up and running in crude fashion in 15 minutes. Getting the remote to really work like the one that came with your TV/DVD player/Receiver takes about 2.5 hours of trial-and-error optimization. It turns the volume up & down in much larger quantums than the OEM remote, and will often change one too many channels when channel surfing. Through loading and reloading and resting the remote, these types of kinks can be reduced after a 1-2 hours of debug. But they can't be eliminated altogether.
Logitech took on a big challenge in making the king of universal remotes. This one has software optimization and ergonomic problems that other Logitech remotes don't have.
Not for big hands December 11, 2007
Jack2700 (Maine)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a very nice looking remote and easy to set up but just not easy to use compared to other remotes. Buttons are small, too close together and do not press smoothly. Also the remote seems very delicate and easy to break. I've tried this one and the Harmony 880 and ended up selling both on eBay and bought a Universal MX-500. I'm much happier, though it is ugly it much more practical and easer to use.
 Very smart little thing December 14, 2007
Doc Schreiber (West Coast)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Got this unit with a LCD TV purchase with huge (humongous) discount, so I though, what the heck, I'll give it a shot. First steps were discouraging, although setup is easy, device connects well via USB and connection to Logitech is smooth. Problems started after that, as I was adding more and more components and Harmony's auto setup steps failed to configure everything properly, but in part due to some of my errors and a few small details I overlooked.
Setting up components is fairly simple and Logitech's database does most of the work for you. It is, however, EXTREMELY important to understand how "Activities" function works and how it needs to be configured. This is the core of Harmony's "brain" and if you fail there, you'll be quite disappointed with it, like so many negative reviews here suggest.
To make a long story short, after a couple of days playing with the device I love it! Once you fully understand how to set it up and tweak it, it's absolutely great. Have all my AV in the house on this single unit, some nine or ten of them and all work great. Even some older components, including some old DVD player, another not so common brand and somewhat old cable box (actually, both of my cable boxes are not that new, just about to upgrade to HD-DVR, so I was pleasantly surprised that Harmony "recognized" them without any problem).
I yet have to experiment and use this remote more. Didn't give it five stars just because of occasional goofy behavior, but certainly nothing too bad, worrisome or too annoying.
People who gave one star reviews to this toy probably got frustrated right in the beginning and/or failed to understand and follow ALL instructions very carefully. Given an amazing number of supported components, both old and new, I find it hard to believe that customers could not make them work properly. I suspect human error in majority of cases. Once you set up Harmony properly and start using it, you'll see how convenient and even intuitive it is. Nice design, too. I was thinking about getting another one, but most of the components it controls are in a single room that I use 80% of the time. When I want to use others in other rooms, I just take Harmony with me. Fortunately, other family members haven't gotten hooked to it yet so they don't care. Once they do, I'll have no choice but to buy another one. I suspect that some newer models may be even more enticing, but would have to look into that.
Did everything I could ask for (4.5 stars is what I'd give it if I could) December 1, 2006
D. Hankins (California)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I love the functionality of this remote. It has some great "activity" programming -- it turns my AV components on and sets the components to the correct inputs/settings. Pretty much everything worked the first time by just following the software's set-up wizard.
In addition, I was able to customize the button functionality, as well as having the Harmony "learn" some commands from my old remotes that were not in the Harmony database (I have some rather obscure AV components).
Compared to previous universal remote (a Sony), setting this one up was a piece of cake.
To nit pick a bit, the software crashed once, the remote had some trouble learning commands from one of my old remotes (but it did finally work), the setup software is a bit unintuitive at times, and the hardware could be a designed a bit better (I think the Tivo remote is still the best feeling remote in your hand).
Overall, I highly recommend this remote for getting rid of remote clutter.
(Note: My remote is the Harmony 520 which looks very similar to the 550 -- the 550 has two extra buttons just above the numeric keypad. I'm assuming that the 550 is an upgrade of the 520.)
 Works Perfectly December 29, 2006
SPJim (Tacoma, WA USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Just acquired the Harmony 550, downloaded the latest software release 7.0, provided the manufaturer(s), model number(s), etc. of all our home theatre devices (even added our 'brand X' DVI switcher), went through the wizard answering questions on their use and it works perfectly.
No more screwing around with all the remotes and/or trying to explain to everyone how to use them. It's a pleasure to buy a device that works as advertised...would recommend it to anyone.
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