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The Harmony 900 is VERY similar to the Harmony One, which is a terrific remote. If you don't need the RF capability, I would stick with the Harmony One - It is a distinguished better value.
My Harmony experience: I started with the 880 and upgraded to the One, and now to the 900.
All of these remotes pass the babysitter test - that is, can a babysitter grasp up the remote and spy tv. The RF capability (using radio frequency "RF" instead of line of view infrared "IR") helps the 900 pass the babysitter test with flying colors.
PROS of the 900
1) The remote has a large mask and there are tons of icons available online to remove advantage of it.
2) The ability to employ RF means that you can status up your system so that the remote does not need to pointed anywhere advance the components for them to work. This is especially useful where your "Search For TV" sing includes several steps such as turning on a receiver, cable box and tv - miss one of those and you can become very frustrated. The RF prevents this. Three provided blasters (one mountainous and two itsy-bitsy) convert the RF signal to IR in your av cabinet. The 900 also can send IR and you can steal which devices have signals sent over RF or IR. I have a plasma spot on the wall and can't easily place an IR blaster nearby, so I have the plasma position to IR and all of my other components - in a nearby AV rack - site to RF. It works gargantuan.
3) All of the other pros you acquire from the 880 and One are also expose in the 900 (except macros - glimpse below) .
4) The other positive dissimilarity between the One and the 900 is that the 900 adds a row of four colored hard buttons to correspond to the A B C and D commands on some cable boxes and blue-ray players. To accomplish room, the calm and previous channel buttons are a bit smaller.
5) The IR blasters are immense and do NOT need to ever be removed from the cabinet to do updates (as you have to do with some other models) . All updates are done on the remote over USB, and the remote then updates the blasters wirelessly.
CONS of the 900
1) By far, the largest con is the inability to simply upgrade from previous models. Upgrading from the 880 to the One took five minutes. You unprejudiced have to remap a couple of buttons and everything else carries over. Upgrading from the One to the 900 requires you to initiate from scratch. It forces you to accomplish an entirely current Harmony epic. You have to reconfigure all of your devices, all of your activities, and all of your popular channels. You have to re-teach any custom IR commands. This is fairly inexcusable. I have five devices and four activities. I've been using Harmony remotes for years and have really fine-tuned my set-up. It took me over three hours to regain it all abet in shape - and I'm probably level-headed not there. So, this is a major flaw I would hope they can fix.
2) The remote can mild do customized macros when starting or ending an activity, but you cannot do macros within an activity anymore. That means you cannot have the finish lisp also calm the sound and bring up the lights. This is not a broad deal for me, since I never outmoded macros on my older Harmony remotes, but some people seem to be quite hooked out of shape over the removal of this feature. To be distinct, you can unruffled do whatever you want when starting or ending an activity.
3) The "slideshow" on the older remotes has been replaced with a sleep timer.
4) The stickers provided to affix the blaster and mini-blasters to your AV cabinet shelves are bad. You will need to spend better double-sided tape.
5) The 900 takes longer to switch between screens than the One or the 880 did. It is as if it is "thinking" about things for a second or two before they happen.
6) The left and good soft keys customary to switch between screens are less sensitive than they were on the One, and you cannot adjust the conceal touch sensitivity.
7) The 900 gives you the ability to add icons to the soft keys, but - unlike the popular channels - you cannot employ custom icons from the internet. This is a comic limitation and the number of available icons is very diminutive. In any event, this is peaceful a step up from the One.
Common channels are collected miniature to four screens per activity. If you want to have more than that (and many people do) you need to add another perceive TV activity. Each activity gets independent accepted channels. I wish this could be expanded. My remote is only using 31 MB of 62 MB of onboard memory, and I would savor to have the ability to add many more channels to my favorites.
9) You no longer have the ability to adjust the brightness of the light on the charging cradle, but it isn't very shimmering and doesn't bother me. The One has a switch on the bottom of the cradle to adjust the brightness.
CONCLUSION
All in all, once configured, I really like the 900. However, I would never upgrade from the One to the 900 unless I really needed the RF functions. If you were to take the RF function from the 900, I would deem the One is a better remote and only costs half as noteworthy. That said, the RF function is a mammoth addition and really makes it great easier for others to exercise. It easily passes the babysitter test. I'm giving it three stars because I reflect the One gives mighty better value, and the inability to easily upgrade really irked me. If the One did not exist, or if I had never owned a previous Harmony remote, I would give it 4 1/2 stars.
BRIEF EVALUATION
The Harmony 900 can replace all infrared (IR) remotes obsolete to control the various devices associated to an entertainment center. Once configured, its activity-centric interface effectively shields the user(s) from having to explicitly control individual devices, unless they want to. The Harmony will allow 'everyone', including the less technical members of a household to salvage the most off an entertainment center's capabilities without having to pains about switching the remote's 'modes' or remembering the moral I/O ports before watching a Blu-ray movie, watching TV or listening to the radio.
As compared to its immediate predecessor models (880, 890), the Harmony 900 offers a number of incremental but generally welcome improvements or changes
- Ergonomic shape, well-balanced body with sculpted buttons for a tactile feel.
- Surprisingly trustworthy, hi-res, burly color touch camouflage that allows for up to 6, context defined 'soft' buttons.
- Included IR Blasters that perform controlling devices slack walls or inside locked cabinets possible and improve remote's ease of utilize - no need to 'point' the remote.
- Better designed, wider charger atrocious.
The current Harmony 900 is an pleasing and efficient intention to operate one's audio-visual equipment and it's should be a 'must have' for anyone who can can afford it. PS3 owners should be aware that Harmony's lack of Bluetooth aid will require the remove of another add-on.
PACKAGING AND PHYSICAL SETUP
The Harmony 900 comes in a well-partitioned box that keeps the various components well-protected during shipping and makes it relatively easy to inaugurate and access its contents.
The following are included:
- Remote's body
- Charging base
- Remote's rechargeable battery
- IR master blaster
- 2 Mini Blasters
- 2 Power Adapters (one for the charger and one for the IR blaster)
- 5-ft. USB cable
- System software on a DVD
- Multi-lingual poster-style manual
Putting it together is as easy as inserting the battery into the remote control - it's designed such that you can't do it obnoxious, attaching the power adapter wire to the charging stand and then performing the initial charge.
CONFIGURATION
An Internet-connected computer with a USB port will be needed to install the software and configure the remote. Once installed and an yarn is established, the software will guide the user, step by step through all the configuration/setup activities.
[To originate setup quicker and easier, one should have the Sincere perform and model number (like Sony KDL-70XBR7, not fair Sony Bravia) for all the devices about to be registered or one will have to go through a time appealing process attractive 'teaching' the Harmony what every button on the unrecognized device's remote does.]
Once all devices are registered and recognized, the software will suggest a series of 'activities' that it believes you should be able to manufacture with the registered devices. You can obtain them all and then refine your requirements, capture some or add some of your contain. For the basic setup to complete, Harmony will need to know which devices need to be on, which specific plot is to be controlled when turning the volume up or down (TV or receiver) or changing the channel (cable box or TV) and which specific ports/channels are traditional (HDMI-1 or Satellite-IN)
After the basic setup is completed and tested, it's possible to further customize your activities. Typically, you will add 'favorite' channels to the touch camouflage. For reasons I can't understand, the only 'channel' icons Harmony carries are for a number of FOX outlets but Harmony-compatible icons for most known channels (other than C-SPAN) I could bag at a spot whose URL I posted as the first 'comment' made to this post (can't post URLs inside the review) . Optionally, you can add some 'soft' buttons for each method if the remote does not have physical buttons for all the available functions.
It is also possible to customize the contrivance your remote behaves: several color schemes are available, you can determine for how long the 900 will cease lit after a button is pressed, whether the 'favorite channels' or the 'controls' are displayed by default when a TV-related activity is selected, you can add custom commands as 'soft buttons' on the touch hide or change the default mapping of physical buttons to different commands.
Further aesthetic tuning can be done to change the default buttons mapping for any registered procedure or even to set the loyal order in which the various components are turned on and off and, if needed, situation specific delays between specific steps performed to originate a particular 'activity'.
Even when there aren't any devices tedious walls or inside cabinets, the Blasters can be archaic to enhance the user's experience. By placing these IR-generating devices (one immense 'master' and two attached 'mini blasters') on the shelf/shelves or inside the cabinets you no longer need to inconvenience about pointing 'at' whatever it is you want to operate because the Blasters communicate with the remote via radio (RF) which means no need to point and less severe distance restrictions. The Blaster exhaust is an either-or proposition for any individual arrangement. For example, Harmony allowed me to exempt the AV receiver from the Blaster treatment (it was not responding to Blaster commands reliably), meaning that everything but the AV receiver could be controlled through the Blaster while the receiver was getting 'traditional' IR commands from the remote.
While it's lawful that the initial setup can be completed in about one hour, I found that the more I expend the Harmony the more I mediate of further refinements so it can catch several setup refining sessions over several days before the configuration could be called 'stable'. Once that's accomplished, everything is dwelling more or less on 'automatic pilot' and there's very dinky to wretchedness and a lot to relish. Once weak to the 'cycle', updating is easy: fire up the software, enter changes, connect the remote to the computer and catch it updated.
THE EXPERIENCE
Anyone watching a Harmony at work for the first time should be impressed. I know that I was when I first mature my Harmony 880 a year or so ago. It's almost like it's talking with the TV, the satellite receiver, the Blu-ray player, the AV receiver box. Devices turn themselves on or off as needed as you switch from one 'activity' to another, they reconfigure themselves, opening the superior input or output channels and the Harmony appears to conduct 2-way communication sessions with each one of them individually - probably not moral since, as far as I know, IR controllers don't secure feedback from the devices they control - if anyone knows otherwise, please apt me.
Once site up, the typical interaction with the remote is to rob an 'activity' and then appreciate the point to. The Harmony will turn off the devices not needed for the activity, turn on and properly site up those that must be on, plot up the soft buttons on the touch veil and procedure the 'hard' buttons to various functions. To switch to a different activity, simply touch the 'activity' button, then engage the desired activity from the touch camouflage and the Harmony will go through a similar cycle. To turn everything off, touch the 'off' button and everything is turned off unless the setup asked the Harmony to maintain sure devices 'on' all the time - the satellite box, for example.
Whenever the Harmony makes a mistake or gets confused about the area of a particular map, pressing the Succor button will state the Harmony in a troubleshooting mode. It will try to interactively fix the quandary or, if the user knows exactly what to do, telling Harmony 'I know how to fix this' will give the user the opportunity to address the dilemma without assistance.
Besides 'activities', it is possible to protest a specific method, independently. And, of course, the Harmony's possess settings can be tweaked to some degree - and for minor, remote specific changes such as the color intention, the setup can be performed on the remote directly - no need to connect it to a computer.
Unlike its immediate predecessors, the Harmony 900 designers opted for the 'groovy' peruse. Sculpted, well-defined buttons, instead of the quiet styling of the 880 and 890. Impartial about every button you would seek information from on a profitable remote is there, including the 4 'colored' buttons dilapidated with some satellite/cable boxes and Blu-ray players. Since Harmony 'knows' a lot about all the devices it works with - it loads data from a 200,000 electronic devices database - the functions usually device correctly to the expected Harmony button. In addition, the beefy color touch cover allows for 6 additional 'soft' buttons to be visible at any given time and, if more than 6 buttons are needed, it's possible to 'flip' page after page of more buttons - there are 'touch' page-flipping buttons to the good and left of the touch camouflage. In our case, we dilapidated 4 pages worth of 'favorite channels' so we have 'my' page, a movies channels page, the kids page and Ms. D's page - most convenient.
The remote lights up whenever a button or the conceal are pressed or when the remote is moved, shaken or rattled (gently, hopefully) . It would conclude lit for up to 30 seconds (configurable) if nothing else is done to it, waiting for additional commands. Clearly, the shape was scientifically sure to fit the average human hand as comfortably as possible - it feels well balanced and comfortable to own and it's easy to grasp up from a table or from your armchair's arm. When not in consume, the preferred resting spot should be the charging cradle which holds it securely until it's needed again.
WARRANTY AND SUPPORT
The one year slight warranty appears to be standard. Harmony reserves the honest to replace your unit or parts of it with either recent or refurbished components at its gain discretion. You are not covered if you abuse your Harmony and, depending on local laws and regulations you may or may not have to pay for shipping the blueprint encourage and forth.
Once you register your Harmony, you are entitled to 90-day free phone assist. This should be sufficient to address whatever issues you may have with the setup. Based on my prior experience with the 880, once configured, there's hardly any need to form further changes for as long as you don't add unusual devices to your entertainment center so 90 days of relieve should be enough. After that, abet is available for a fee. I never required any assistance for my 880 and I am smooth within the 90-day free attend with the 900.
ISSUES
Like everything else, the Harmony 900 is not perfect. I probably hinted at some problems above but it may not harm to list them all in one situation.
- It's a fingerprint magnet. Unlike its 880/890 sisters, the 900's intelligent shadowy surface not only takes fingerprints, it's attracting them and it's showing them off, possibly in duplicate (kidding) . The 900 looks stunning and graceful when trim but all it takes is one touch for distinguished the prettiness to go away and you MUST touch the 'touch' hide or you won't be able to do great.
- Lack of Bluetooth encourage requires to prefer an extra module for controlling a PS3 if you have one. I have one.
- No more than 4 screens of well-liked channels (for a total of 24) per TV activity.
- The software does not attend more than one Harmony plot per tale if they are to be configured independently. The requirement for separate accounts makes maintaining more that one Harmony blueprint more difficult than it should be. Granted, at the notice the Harmonies sell, this is not likely to be an allege for too many users.
- The IR Blaster stays on at all times - the only draw to turn it off is to unplug it.
- Label, of course. How many people will be willing to pay more than they paid for their PS3 to be able to control 'it' and the devices surrounding it? Hard to announce.
RATING
I already discussed why using a Harmony 900 makes for such a satisfying experience:
- it simplifies life by eliminating the need of keeping numerous remote controls handy
- it saves time and reduces frustrations
- it allows those less technologically sophisticated (judge children) to recall corpulent advantage of technology
Two of the issues that I listed above - need of an add-on for PS3 back and complications when managing more than one Harmony draw - are not likely to affect most Harmony users.
I will not factor in 'price' when rating the Harmony 900 because prices can change and because the review guidelines status that I shouldn't. By the contrivance, I was able to fetch my frail 880 for VERY Exiguous when it showed up for a couple of hours as a 'lightning deal', refurbished, so prices can and do vary.
The 'fingerprint magnet' predicament is genuine. It's possible that not everyone cares about it but it annoys me a lot. I will deduct half a star for that but the rounded up collect is going to be a 5-star, given that individual reviews don't allow for half star increments.
Please effect that (again) I did not factor in 'price', I did not need warranty repairs and my interaction with customer abet was very petite.
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Note: HARMONY 900 vs. HARMONY 880 vs. HARMONY ONE
Since I happen to absorb both the 880 and the 900 at this time and I saw the ONE in action at a friend's house, a brief comparison may relieve some resolve on which model to retract.
Advantage 900 over 880
----------------------
- IR blasters invent control of out-of-side devices possible (can derive as add-ons separately for the 880)
- Sculpted buttons provide better tactile feedback
- Touch-screen allows for a lot of flexibility in configuration
- Higher cloak resolution
- Better designed shape
- (Apparently) better charging unit. The 880 known to experience 'charger' problems.
Advantage 880 over 900
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- Price
- Matte surface does not note fingerprints
Advantage 900 over ONE
----------------------
- Yellow/Red/Green/Blue keys on the remote
- Blasters
Advantage ONE over 900
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- Price
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CUSTOMER SUPPORT
I am adding this fraction after a few weeks and two customer befriend calls because I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and professionalism of Logitech's customer abet team.
While it is moral that, in both cases, it took more than 15 minutes for someone to actually steal up the phone, my issues - both having to do with programming the remote - were resolved speedily and to my complete satisfaction by the assist person directly modifying my setup and, in both cases, the calls ended with some glowing useful advice.
Of course, it should be notorious that 'free' assist by humans is only available for the first 90 days. After that, it's the knowledge contemptible or paying for human assistance.
As a long time fan of the Harmony remote series, particularly the Harmony One, I was inflamed to hear that Logitech had introduced the radio frequency (RF) version of this unbelievable universal advanced remote. This 900 builds upon the comfortable shape and big key layout construct of the Harmony One. It also has an even more rich view and feel. It looks substantial on my coffee table, on or off the charging wrong! The additional 4 color buttons way perfectly to my position DirecTV receiver's and Blu-Ray player's additional features.
This is my 3rd Harmony remote win and I am aloof amazed at how simple the one touch Activity (Explore TV, Ogle DVD, etc) come makes controlling my system. My wife and kids can control my entire setup without having to call for relieve. One touch simplicity and the remote gets it done. The OEM remotes from my 6 components never near out of the drawer.
Like all Harmony's, the Web programming and USB connection manufacture setup a plod (Harmony had the remote codes for each of my components in their database) . The Harmony 900 takes simple setup a step further by making the final remote and extender configurations all done on the touch shroud. Very intuitive and exertion free.
The Harmony 900 is everything I hoped it would be and more and has no equal. If you have remote or hidden equipment, or unprejudiced want the convenience of not having to `point' the remote every time you enter a bellow, the Harmony 900 is your ultimate solution!
