A little over three years ago I posted about my new Harmony remote – the Harmony Xbox Remote – which held out the promise of a universal smart remote that also played nice with my Xbox.
Now, I have been using Smart Remotes since I hacked my old AR Remote in the 80s, so I always have my expectation set accordingly:
- Smart Remotes are not smart. They are “stateless” and don’t know if any devices are actually on or not
- There’s always a compromise between too many and too few buttons
- They’re always, and I mean always, too complicated for anyone but me to use.
So when I got my hands on the Harmony 650 I was curious what improvements have in the past few years. The 650 is a $99 remote, well proportioned and balanced in the hand, with a nice matte black finish. It has a small color display and the buttons have a good rubber feel to them.
Like other Harmony remotes, you connect this one up via USB to your PC, download the latest software and then walk through a few steps to identify your devices. The 650 has re-chargeable batteries via USB and so far it has been running for weeks with no re-charge.
I did notice that the 650 has very little, if any, lag between button press and device action. My old Harmony has some serious lag which can seriously kill a remotes effectiveness, so kudos to Logitech on fixing that. I am also able to get back to Activities without the remote re-executing the macros. This is a big deal so that it doesn’t accidentally turn off devices that I want to keep on – I just want to get back the Activity menu. The old Harmony had this problem, which was extremely frustrating.
So the big test was setting it up and setting it down – seeing if my family could just use it with no complaints or questions. After a week I asked my son, 11, his opinion. Net net, it works for him, he likes the black color, and that’s all I need to hear.
Perhaps this is the first remote that everyone in my family can use?
I love these remotes. But the real breakthrough in terms of the family being able to use it seamlessly was getting one of the RF versions. In our basement we have three devices that need to be turned on and off. The IR remote had to be held pointing forward for a few seconds. This was enough to make the process unnatural.
I picked up a refurbished 890 for ~$135 and it's been a huge usability improvement. Even better - Dad got major props from the whole family for buying a new gadget! :-)
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