Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've been using the Logitech One remote for several years, and found that it was the best remote I'd ever used. The only complaints I had with the Logitech One were: 1) The battery was unreliable. I had to replace it about once a year because it would swell up and stop holding a charge. 2) It didn't work very well for controlling our Roku since it had an IR interface only. Unfortunately, the next generation of Logitech remotes (like the Harmony Ultimate), just didn't work very well because of the placement of the buttons in front of the touch screen. That's why I was excited to see this remote where Logitech switched back to the excellent button placement of the previous remotes. We upgraded our Media Center to a new Tivo Roamio, and decided it was time to upgrade our remote as well. Anyway, here are the things we like about this new Harmony Home Control remote: 1) The feel of the remote is excellent! It has a much better feel than any remote I've ever used - with a solid-feeling rubberized body. 2) The button placement is just as good as the previous One and 900 series remotes - which is the most intuitive button setup I've ever used. 3) The setup was actually very simple. Fortunately, it was able to import my previous Logitech One remote setup; but, the addition of the new Tivo was very simple using the new mobile app on an Android phone. It took all of 20 minutes to completely configure it; although, I did get hung up once with trying to customize the buttons. My mistake was trying to find the correct menu option instead of just following through the wizard. That part wasn't very intuitive - but it wasn't horrible either. Once the setup was complete, all the menu options showed up in a way that made a lot more sense - but you have to finish the wizard first. 4) I love the home control options! We're using this with a Lutron Caseta Wireless Smart Bridge - combined with several of their Caseta switches. Everything integrates perfectly, letting me control lights either individually or in groups. Once you get the hang of it, the options are pretty cool: - I have it setup to turn the family room light on at a dimmed setting automatically when we turn the TV off at night. It only turns on the light after sunset. - There is another button that turns off all the downstairs lights. - It's easy to setup either a single light or a group of lights to turn on, off, dim etc... I will admit that dimming as a group isn't overly useful; but, it does work. 5) It controls all my devices absolutely perfectly, and is extremely responsive. 6) I love the idea and function of the Hub sending all the remote commands instead of the actual remote. It really does make the control function more reliable - and there's no more worrying about pointing at your devices (although it's still a habit for me). The remote also comes with an extra IR blaster that plugs directly into the Hub if you have a device (like a TV) that's placed separate from everything else. Although the remote is mostly perfect, it does have a couple of irritating flaws: 1) The keys aren't backlit. I can still live with it because the button positions are intuitive; but, it would be far better to have backlit keys. 2) I suspect the reason they don't use backlit keys is because the remote runs off of a single coin battery instead of being rechargeable. That's fine, and I suspect this battery will last a while - but I would rather have a rechargeable remote with backlit keys... As far as a recommendation goes, if this had backlit keys I would recommend it whole-heartedly. Without the backlit keys, you'll have to decide if an intuitive keypad layout is going to be enough. I will say that I'm happy with it. [*** UPDATE 10/13/2014 ***] After using this for a couple more weeks, we decided we liked it enough to replace the Logitech Harmony 900 Remote we were using upstairs. Unfortunately, the new remote had a defective button (the DVR button didn't work); but, Amazon was fast with providing a replacement. We are now using 2 of these on the same account, and any member of the family can log into either one to issue commands with our phones as well. This really is a great little remote - but I still wish it had backlit keys. [*** UPDATE 11/5/2014 ***] We're still loving this remote, and I updated the review to cover some of the stuff I've been doing with the home automation features.