Best digital Gadgets – Part 1 – Harmony Remote

Best digital Gadgets – Part 1 – Harmony Remote

We live in a generation where anything and everything can be controlled by a remote aka clicker. Let’s face it – life will not be the same without the remote control.

With the growing number of digital gadgets that occupy your living and bed room, it is inevitable that someday you will find yourself sleeping surrounded by all those remotes.

Even a simple task like switching to DVD from satellite TV can require some juggling skills with atleast 2 or 3 remotes.

And then you have an epiphany – life has to be simpler than this. You cannot be sleeping in the company of plastic remotes.

Enter the world of universal remotes – the magic device with a promise to change the way you control your digital devices. Well, not all devices live up to the expectation.

There are a lot of options in the market for these universal devices – but most of them are cumbersome and if anything – make your life much more complex!

Like the silver lining of a cloud, there is an exception – the Logitech Harmony.

The Harmony – like its name, aims to control your devices in perfect harmony. The first device was created by a company called Easy Zapper and now is part of the Logitech group.

What separates Harmony from the rest of the pack – its approach to device control and its usability.

What I mean by the approach to device control is that – Harmony lets you define “Tasks” which require performing multiple actions on various devices. For example – Let us take an example task, “Watch ESPN”. To do this, you need to make sure your TV is on and set to the correct input, your Satellite Box is on and set to the correct channel. When we say a task – it is doing all the above set of actions which will let you attain the goal – in this case, watch sports on ESPN. With some of the other universal remotes, it is common for them to provide functionality to control the various devices, but you still have to perform each action individually to get the desired result.

Usability – Atleast the device I have is probably one of the best – A touch screen based device beats a device with 100 buttons any day! We all love to touch the bright screen :) - more than that, the usability of the harmony is apparent in the way you setup the device. You do not have to go through the cumbersome process of pressing each button on the old remote so that your new remote can learn the codes. Imagine holding the 2 remotes and pressing each button – yikes !

With the Harmony’s bundled software allows you to select the list of devices you have. These devices and their codes are pre configured by Logitech and the information is automatically pulled from Logitech servers via the internet. Once you select the list of devices, some preconfigured tasks are setup. You can choose to create additional tasks as you like – all using the software. Once you are done, you connect the remote to the computer and apply your changes – and viola! all the tasks are setup on your remote – as easy as that.

In my experience, the process was as easy as that. Ofcourse, you may have one of those devices which is not in the online database of remotes. Then you still can go old school and manually learn the device by pressing the buttons. So in all – the harmony is the perfect beast ! Sure, there are some quirks too with specific devices – I have still not been able to switch to the Digital inputs of Sony LCD TV to the correct input consistently. But it is something I can live with considering all I need is one sleek touch screen remote.

There are several versions of the Harmony – but the Harmony One is probably the best version for its price tag. Had a small touch screen, rechargeable battery and comes with a cradle, good form factor to fit perfectly in your palms. All Harmony units are a shade expensive than the ordinary remotes. The price tag is absolutely just for what this unit is capable of. So all in all – one of the best gadgets I have purchased.

Harmony also has the 1000 and the 1100 versions – Cool large touch screen and a bit expensive – but makes you look uber cool :)