Logitech Harmony 700 Rechargeable Remote with Color Screen (Black) [Discontinued by Manufacturer]

This review is in two parts. One is for those unfamiliar with the Logitech Harmony system. The other is a review of the Harmony 700 and a comparison to the 300.If you don't know the Harmony system:It is the ONLY way to go. The harmony system is unlike all other universal remotes. instead of programming the remote by using the remote buttons, you connect the remote to a computer and use either the Harmony website or software to program the remote. Not only is this dramatically easier, the biggest value comes when the remote needs to be replaced. Instead of starting from scratch, you can buy a new Harmony remote and just copy the old programming over. I recently upgraded from the Harmony 300 to the 700 and most of the programming took 30 seconds just to copy over my old programming. Since the 700 had more features I then went about making the changes I wanted to make.Let's start with how you program any harmony remote. Once you connect it to a computer and create an account on the MyHarmony.com website, the remote is automatically recognized. The website then asks you what equipment you want to control. You enter the model number for each device (TV, stereo, dvr, etc). The website then looks up all of the remote codes for those devices and assigns those codes to the remote buttons. So far this is not drastically different than other universal remotes except that by entering the model number of a device you don't have to search through a bunch of Sony codes to find the one that works for your Sony device.Now comes the big difference in programming: On your computer, when you select one of the devices from your living room that you have programmed into the device you will see a large color graphic image of the remote on the screen. When you hover the mouse over a button on the screen it will tell you what that button has been programmed to do for that device. So for example if you select your TiVo DVR, it will show you which button goes to TV central and which one is for Thumbs Up. Each button that is not yet programmed, appears with a blue outline so you immediately know what buttons you have available to program. Off to the side of the screen you will see a list of commands that were available for your device with the ones already programmed dimmed and the ones not yet assigned in bold. You just drag any command to any button to program it.If you want to add a command that is not in the list, just get a factory remote and press the button to learn a command. You press the correct button on the original remote and the Harmony learns that command. This is useful for mixing devices. For example, I want to control the TV power and my TiVo without having to switch devices. To do this I just learned the TV power button onto all of the devices on the remote (it would be easier if Harmony allowed you to drag a button from one device and drop it on another but they don't allow that currently). There is a feature called activities. This allows you to combine a number of actions. For example the "Watch TV" activity can turn on your TV, DVR, Stereo, and tune to the correct inputs. The reason I don't like activities is they always assume that every device is off and I never turn off my DVR or stereo so when I hit Watch TV it turns my TV on and turns my DVR off. This is not correctable so this feature is useless to me. Of course the learn command feature fixes this with only a minor inconvenience.Once you have remote programmed the way you want, you just press the SYNC command on your computer and all the codes are updated in the remote. When you lose or break a remote, or just want to upgrade, you connect the new remote to your account and it asks you if this is a replacement. If it is, the old codes are copied to the new remote. When you buy a new device, like a new TV, you just take the old TV off, enter the model number for the new one, customize any buttons you want, and then hit sync. Takes only a couple of minutes to get everything perfect and there is no pressing tons of buttons on a remote to get it done. Everything is done with a drag and drop mouse interface.I give the Harmony system 5 Stars. While it can be improved, it is light years beyond any other system.Here is my review of the harmony 700 and comparison to the 300I had the 300 for years and we loved it. The only downside to it was there were not enough buttons to configure every command for my DVR. When I wore one of my 300's out (we have two) I bought two 700s to replace them. WOW the 700 is fantastic. It differs from the 300 in a few key ways:1. Command window. It is has a color screen about one inch on each side. The screen has two physical buttons next to the screen on the left and two next to the screen on the right. This allows you to program any four commands to these buttons. Not only can you program them you can call them anything you want. I learned the TV power command for all of my devices and was able to call it TV power. If four extra commands aren't enough for each device, no problem. Just program four more into a second screen. There are three physical navigation buttons below the screen. One selects devices. The other two page right and left through an unlimited number of screens. I have one device with 8 screens (32 extra commands). You can organize, select, and delete commands as you wish. This alone makes the 700 worth the money.2. The remote has an accelerometer in it. When you pick up the remote the screen turns on and when you set it does the screen turns off to save battery power.3. Rechargeable batteries. You never have to buy batteries again. It comes with two AA rechargeable. When the battery runs down, just plug it into the included charger. The charge lasts a long time (I have never run the batteries down since I plug the remote in once a week).4. Standardized USB jack. Since the included charger is a standard android cell phone charger, you can actually plug the remote into any android charger. When you connect the remote to the computer, if you already have a standard connection for an android cell phone or nexus tablet, you can use the same one for your remote. With the 300 I was forced to keep an old micro USB cable around for just the remote.Other than that the 700 and the 300 are light, well built, and relatively intuitive to use. You will quickly get to where you can operate the remote by feel without reading the buttons or even looking at the remote. There are colored keys that you can use for special features like Netflix. We switch between TiVo and Netflix on our smart TV with one click each direction.The only downsides are:• Activity buttons are a waste to me.• Activity buttons are not useful to me because of how they operate• You cannot name the remotes on MyHarmony.com. If you have two 700s (as I do) they are called 700(1) and 700(2) so I have to keep track of which is which. Logitech is working on adding this feature in the future and of course it will be backward compatible to existing remotes.The only reason to use a remote other than harmony is if you don't own a computer. The 300 is excellent and the 700 is phenomenal.

The term "Universal" should not apply to all remotes. In the past, whenever I've picked up a remote that called itself "universal", it always ended up not being able to control one thing or another (usually a motorola cable box).Once a buddy of mine introduced me to the Harmony remote, I was sold and have been using Harmony remotes for around 5 years. The Harmony remotes are as close to "universal" as you could want. I can control everything in my entertainment center with this remote. The only thing I couldn't control was my PS3 (I've since sold it) because PS3s use bluetooth for communications (there is an add-on piece of hardware that Logitech sells that allows this functionality though!). Harmony remotes will also control remote-controlled lighting sources.Once you program the remote through a wizard on your PC, you can put your other remotes away. Through the software wizard, you add each device in your entertainment center, then you tell the activity wizard which device you use to control the sound (either your surround receiver or the TV's speakers), which devices are in use and which inputs/outputs are used. Once the activity is modified, the info is uploaded to your remote through the included USB cord. The default button mappings for each activity is completely intuitive and mapped as expected. For instance, hitting the pause button when during the 'Watch TV' activity will pause live TV (if you have a PVR/DVR), while pressing pause during the 'Watch a Movie' activity will pause your DVD or Blu-ray.The buttons light up and the screen illuminates on the remote when you lift the remote so you can see all of the buttons in dark settings. One-touch activities change all the inputs/outputs to accommodate your selection.The Harmony 700 is great because it is rechareable and accommodates up to 6 devices. In my entertainment center, I have a Samsung Blu Ray player, a Sony LCD TV, a Cisco Cable box, an XBOX 360, and a Denon surround system. It controls all of these devices easily.I also change cable companies every year or so to get the best deal, so whenever I change cable companies, it means a change of the cable box. With the Harmony 700, you just add the new device and review the Watch TV activity through the wizard and then select the new cable box as the device you use in place of the old.Further, with each new cable box, there's a new remote. With the Harmony 700, you don't have to learn where the buttons are on the new remote because they are already mapped to the 700's buttons. It was similar when I bought a new Sony TV to replace a Samsung.All of the Harmony remotes are pretty amazing and use the same method for programming through the PC. They work with every cable box I've had over the past five years including those with PVR functionality.Additionally, each button on the remote can be fully customized to your liking. You can also customize the activity names (ie I have one called 'Play Xbox').I bought one for my father and set it up for him. It even was able to control a remote-controlled audio system he still has from the late 80s that he uses as his entertainment center's speakers.The funniest thing about the Harmony remotes though... You'll find some people are so used to using multiple remotes and so fixed on their existing remotes (plural) because they know where the buttons are on each, they are resistant to using a single remote and learning the location on a single remote.

Too bad Logitech has discontinued this remote. It is virtually identical to the 650 but it is rechargeable and doesn't need batteries. Fits in your hand very well. The software can be a bit unintuitive in places, but once you figure it out, it is not so bad. I use it to control a Arris DVR, LG TV, Raspberry Pi3 (with adapter) and Logitech Z906 sound system. Battery life is pretty good - last well over a week with moderate use.

this is a replacement for an older harmony that had batteries leak in it. I was missing the features of the harmony that I used so much with the cable remote. like skip forward and the simplicity of only having to hit power once to shut off multiple devices. love that it is rechargeable and I won't have to worry about leaking batteries again!

I bought this to replace a model 650 remote which had served us well but was starting to develop an "insensitive" keypad. Early impressions are favorable

Seemed like a great idea until I needed assistance. Gave up being on hold several times.Scrapped setup for now. Back to my other remotes.

Amazon was great no issues there. Just wish there was a way to manually program this remote (ala Logitech Mice via UberOptions).