Review: Logitech Harmony 659 Universal Remote

Posted on 24. Sep, 2009 by Bryan.Castleberry in Gadgets

Overview

Compared to most universal remotes that use a puzzle-sequence of key presses and codes to talk to your stuff, the Harmony remote was pretty simple to set up. My unit was refurbished and only came with a usb cable, but it was easy enough to hit up Logitech for the software, and they even had a version for Mac! Yay.

It starts by asking you which devices you have, and you tell the program what type of device you have by putting in the manufacturer and its model. Once you’ve got all your machinery put in, you’re ready to set up activities.

Activities

For example, my setup includes a digital cable box, the tv (duh) and an surround-sound unit. When I push the dedicated ‘watch TV’ button on the remote, it automatically turns everything on, puts the surround-sound on the DTV/CBL input and switches the TV to HDMI1.

From the looks of the list of manufacturers, you’d be pretty hard pressed to find something that’s not supported, but in the event that you do, there’s even a way you can use the original remote to learn commands with the Logitech remote.

Usability

Using the remote is a breeze. It has on-screen instructions that help you learn how to use all the features, and small mix-ups can be fixed by tapping the help button, where the remote will ask you a few questions like ‘Is the TV on?’ or ‘Is the AV receiver on the DTV/CBL input?’ It also has customizable buttons and actions that let you program custom button sequences or display buttons on the remote’s screen that don’t have a dedicated button.

All in all, I’m very glad I found this remote (especially for the price). We’ve just moved into our new house, and it’s saved me a lot of time just handing this single remote to my girlfriend instead of throwing the tv, cable box, and surround sound remotes her direction (and the following explanation of which input does what). It’s also helped in that we actually use the surround sound now since you don’t have to constantly use one remote for channels and another for volume.

So just to recap, we went from this:

To this:

Some enterprising readers may notice the PS3 remote is still hanging around and that’s because the PS3 doesn’t have a built in infra-red receiver. There’s an adapter that will let you use the Logitech Harmony to control playback on the PS3, if you’re interested hit up Amazon.

Happy surfing!

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