LOGITECH Harmony 555 Universal Remote control

This remote is great but it's only for people who can grasp technical stuff and enjoy fiddling.

Getting it set up in a basic way is pretty straightforward - you just let the software walk you through it and tell it the model numbers of the equipment you have. However, if anything doesn't quite work right - such as some buttons not doing what they're supposed to - it's extremely fiddly to get the rest of the job configured.

Take my amplifier. The buttons for selecting the inputs just don't do what they're supposed to. Using the software you can choose from a list of commands for each button, but when there are five different variations on 'DVD input' how do you go about it? You choose one, update the remote, test it and hope, that's how. If it doesn't work you do it all again - and that's for EACH button.

This isn't really Logitech's fault, it's the fault of people who have uploaded incorrect codes to the database, but it doesn't make a new user's job any easier.

Don't get me wrong - after the initial set-up most things worked reasonably well. After a couple of hours and several sessions of tweaking I am now 98% there. Only a couple of infrequently-used buttons don't work properly yet and all I have to do to fix those is assign the right ones in the software.

The remote is very sleek-looking though. Top marks for that.

The harmony 555 has made the use of my home cinema setup a breeze, it was very easy to configure and was working within 5 mins of getting it. You do need to know the exact make and models of all your equipment, but finding this out isn't too tricky and the online database of equipment is staggering.

It has taken me several re-configurations to get it exactly how i want it, but now i will not go back to the 5 different controllers that regularly got misplaced, usually down the side of my sofa!

This is well recommended

This remote is not bad, it was very easy to set up and worked well with all my equipment, although it seems to be quite sore on batteries.

The main negative points are its design, the number buttons are too low on the remote, which is a nightmare for using with Sky boxes.

Outside of that this is good value for money

I would like to give it a higher score but the negatives dissuade me. Software required to set up takes 75MB space and auto-loads every time you reboot taking valuable RAM resources; but it does work well when setting up the device.
Online data base of devices is extensive - my NAD DVD and AV Receiver ,both about 6 years old and not mainstream products, were supported and all functions work exactly the same as the old remote does.
Programmable functions are great - the ability to turn on all devices by pressing one button to watch a DVD or PVR or TV is great and simple to set up. Allow yourself about half an hour to run through the intuitive software to do it.
The four buttons around the LCD screen control lots of the major functions with left/right scroll buttons underneath to move across the menu's to reach many of the less prominent functions. To switch devices and scroll through the menu's can be tortuous compared to reaching for the old remote!
If there was one thing that I would change, it is the ability to turn the thing off !! It is always ready to fire (LCD display on) and the orange glowing back lighting cycles on and off now and again - rather annoying to me but I do have exacting standards (or so I'm told).
On balance, for what the device can do, I would heartily recommend it with the caveat that it is not perfect - but what other comparable remote is.

I bought this on a recommendation. The gadget itself looks & feels great, though some of the buttons don't have as much 'positive action' as I'd like. The problems come when you try to set it up. There are separate sets of activities available for controlling sound and picture, but these are transmitted in addition to the main activities, not instead of them, making them useless. Overall the setup software is incredibly hard to use (took me 2 days before I gave up trying to do what I needed). Finally, the logitech technical support line, an 0800 number, is just never answered even after hours of waiting. This gadget is too expensive to put in the bin, but it belongs there.