Logitech Harmony 550 Universal Remote

This is a great product. And, the technical support is excellent from Logitech. I've got one item, a video game of my son's, that doesn't quite work yet, but, I'm sure if I call them, they'll help me to integrate it.

I've had a few universal remotes in my day, and this is probably one of the most overhyped I have ever tried. I assume people have not used universal remotes before trying this one. It's the only explanation I could come up with. Yes, it's better than using 5 different remotes, but considerably worse than a lot of comparably priced universal remotes on the market.

I foolishly chose the 550 because it looked the least cheesy of all the Logitech products at the time (under $100 at least). But I paid for my hubris.

I've owned this for about 9 months now I guess.

Positives:
Looks good. Nice compact unit.
Relatively easy to set up.
Price (relative to other units)\

Negatives:
Horrible build quality. Unit started creaking within a week's use. Buttons feel cheap and button press response is horrible.

You HAVE to use "glow" almost all the time...almost impossible to use this unit in the dark "by feel" like many other units.

Even when using "GLOW", the screen is extremely hard to read. Resolution and contrast is the worst I have seen on any unit.

Buttons are way too small

I think that's enough, though I could go on. Save your money and get the One...looks to have improved on most of my complaints about the 550.

Or get a Universal Remote Control MX-450

The remote is not very intuitive to use especially when using as part of an "activity". I am a software engineer by profession and I was able to get the hang of it fairly quickly - you might even say I enjoyed "programming" the remote. But my wife and kids hate it. They thought that it was way too difficult to use - the Watch a DVD activity is horribly complex.

I changed all the default settings - the operations associated with the soft buttons - in the remote for my TV and DVD player so that the most obvious and frequently used operations were available on the first "page" for each device. For example, in the default setting for my TV, the Power Off and Power On options were in the 9th page! I moved these options to the first page.

Overall, it is possible to make the remote fairly simple to use (my wife and kids are used to it now) but there is a price you have to pay for the flexibility of using a single remote. I accept it (flexibility vs. complexity) as this is something I live and experience everyday as part of my job. However, I am not sure that this would be acceptable to everyone else.

I have the 880 also and this is a great seond room inexpensive remote. A little hard to read the display bur you soon learn where things are and don't even need the display. Works well with all my hardware and love the ease of setup thru usb port on line.

You cannot beat the price of this thing. It is pretty easy to program as long as you don't like to customize things too much. It works with pretty much device you can think of, and lights up when it senses movement so you can see it in the dark and you don't have to fumble for the "Backlight" button. It's very thin and attractive, and suprisingly has withstandad countless spills by various liquids, and even two hot wax spills, yet it still looks great and works fine after cleaning it off.