Gadgetory

hello I'm David Katz my from Cena this is logitech's harmony touch universal remote control this is a first for logitech harmony the well known brand of universal remote controls because it does involve a touchscreen this remote about a third of it right in the middle it's a 2.4 inch color touch screen so that allows some extra customization and some pretty cool tricks on the flip side it doesn't have as many buttons as traditional Harmony universal remote control so in all I really didn't like it quite as much despite being a lot more expensive and a lot more seemingly advanced because of that touch screen we'll start with the design on this remote it's actually a really cool look if you hold in your hand it's a little bit smaller than the traditional larger wands from harmony it's also got a very nice feel my finger kind of slid right into the back here it's got kind of a curved back when you set it on the table it's got a nice sexy slide right from the back to the front so all things considered it's one of the most attractive remotes I've seen the front does tend to attract a few extra finger prints but not much more so than a standard smartphone or tablet that's really the look that Logitech was going for here with this remote it does look a little bit more like a smartphone or a tablet than traditional remotes and again that's because of this touchscreen the screen itself is pretty responsive when you get into the settings you can actually play around and move the buttons so that's one of the nicer things in fact the remote can move the buttons without having to connect it to a computer so that's one of the nice new things about this remote like all traditional harmony remotes it's designed to control your entire system by activities you can scroll through the activities here you see their watch TV and a bunch of other different activities clicking on one of those will send a series of codes to the television and your entertainment center to engage whatever devices you have and of course set the remote itself to control all the different devices seamlessly one of the other cool options the touch screen gives you is the ability to have favorite channels programmed right in there so you can put up to 50 of these channels with icons and easy access instead of scrolling through your dvrs guide another thing the screen gives you is a numeric keypad you might have noticed there's no keys on the actual remote so you have to go to this virtual keypad to type in channel numbers and like on the downside that lack of buttons on this remote does mean that you don't get quite as easy access to a lot of the best known functions and I really found that to be a deal-breaker another step of feature of the Logitech touch is the built-in rechargeable battery you can't remove the battery if something goes wrong so you might have to make a service called a logitech on the other hand this cradle does provide a nice home base for the remote control so you might not spend as much time looking for it around the living room one of the worst economic decisions logitech made with this remote is to put the transport controls which are play pause fast-forward all those at the very top so they're really difficult to reach and I use those controls all the time for example when skipping commercials on a DVR speaking of skipping commercials this the remote does not have a dedicated button for a forward and reverse skip for 30 seconds skip for example on a TiVo of course you can program those using a soft key but it's really nice to be able to have a hard key for those things especially if you do a lot as commercial skipping in your DVR does offer 30-second skip real big downside and of course traditional Logitech remotes do have that button the bottom set of buttons is a little bit more difficult to reach than I'd like to see as well you can actually have to stretch to get down to the guide and the DVR buttons the cursor controls a little easier to access but again not quite as nice as I'd seen on some remotes where they do place that really central cursor directly below the thumb one of the cool things the touch screen does allow is gestures so you can program up to five different gestures swiping in the four cardinal directions and also a tap and that does allow a little bit closer to a smart phone style interface but on the flip side the screen itself isn't as responsive as most smartphones and things like scrolling can go awry and especially because there's a strip here along the bottom you can sometimes accidentally activate the devices or the help function like all harmony remotes the touch does require you to connect a PC to do all of the heavy lifting in terms of programming you can also learn commands from your other remotes if they aren't in Harmony's database that whole process went relatively seamlessly and again it's one of the main features of harmony remotes of course it is available on a lot cheaper remotes like the 650 and that is the tuchas main downfall as the 650 is available for about a fifth of the price of this really expensive remote it's about 250 dollars lists and that means you can buy a Harmony 650 for sixty-five dollars that's a huge difference in price and for my money I'd rather spend it on a tablet which is about the same price as this remote that's a quick look at the Logitech Harmony touch I'm David Katz my resina