Harmony Elite

Very well designed and practical universal remote. However it requires Internet connection to work. The device sends a signal to its own Hub via internet, and the hub sends the signal to the TV and other components.As a result the device does not have to point at the tv, but the hub must be located so that it is in sight of the TV. Since it is Internet dependent, there can be a slight lag from the moment you activate things with the remote and the signal turns on the TV.You must locate the hub such that it is directly in line with the infrared sensors of your devices, or you can use the small infrared devices and attach them to your devices with the sticky backing. In my case, I located the hub on a high shelf directly opposite my entertainment center, about 20 feet away. I was pleased to learn that if and when you want to make changes to your system, you can do that on line using the harmony app and you never have to touch the hub again. A TIP - when you make a change, if you use ALEXA as I do, you have to get ALEXA to learn that a change has been made. This is not as simple as it should be. First you use the Harmony app to get the Harmony Hub to learn the change. That is the simple part. After much trial and error as well as reading many blogs, I found that I could make changes work with ALEXA only if I unplugged ALEXA, and unplugged my WINK hub (which controls many devices), and then totally reset my XFINITY router using the reset button on the back of the device. Once the router had completed its reset, I then restarted the WINK. Once it had cycled up, I plugged in ALEXA again, and then asked ALEXA to search for devices. It was usually successful in finding the changes to the system. In one case, I never could get ALEXA to react to voice control for a specific group of Cree lights, even though the ALEXA app showed the lights as being recognized. To solve the problem, I ended up setting up 2 Alexa activities - one to turn them on, and a second to turn them off. Once the bulbs were in the activity, no more problems. The activity worked perfectly. Not sure if ALEXA would be able to control the bulbs by voice now or not, but since the activity worked, I did not even retry that. There may be an easier way, but if there is, I could not find it.In the initial set up (and later too), Harmony itself is easy to program, and can handle the startup sequence for the tv, amps, etc. If you are a techie you can use IFTTT to do other things, like turn on lights, etc., but this is more difficult. Instructions are available on the Web though, thus making this the most universal device since the early Monster remotes, which were fantastic programmable remotes that are no longer available from the manufacturer. And it is much more reliable than the Logitec remotes, which is their only serious competition at this point, and I have tested quite a few devices. It can handle almost any setup you can envision, and my personal setup is very complex. It works great, once you get used to it. The only weakness I have found is that you can accidentally affect a touch screen button when you are just holding it in your hand.I wanted to be able to control everything in my family room with both a hand-held remote and with Alexa. I was able to do so with this device. However, I had to purchase LIFX bulbs in order to use the built-in light bulb buttons on the remote. My Cree bulbs could not be programmed to work directly from the remote - at least if they could, I did not know how to do it. Perhaps use of IFTT would have achieved this, but I opted for the LIFX bulbs. The LIFX were very easy to link up (no other hub was required, whereas I had to use another hub for the CREE - I had chosen WINK which worked well but was a little difficult to link to everything. The LIFX bulbs linked directly to the Harmony Hub and I had no problems whatsoever with the linking to the hub, and therefore to the remote. This remote is simply excellent in my opinion - with the only small weakness being as mentioned before - sometimes you can trigger an action accidentally depending on how you hold this touch-screen remote.It recharges on its own well designed stand ( mention this because the big weakness in the Monster remotes was the poorly designed charging stand that often did not make good contact with the remotes, resulting in the Monster internal battery not being charged when you went to use the remotes). Monster (which, by the way, was 100% infrared with no internet connection required) had one feature not available on the Harmony - it had an 'error' button that you could use to cycle through your devices if one did not turn on or off - if you identified the device you could then shut that device on or off. With the Harmony, if something fails to turn on or off, you need to shut all devices off (except light bulbs) using the 'off' button at the top of the remote, and then restart the desired activity. This is very minor though - the problem is rare, and usually only occurs if my wife manually turns a device on or off instead of using the Harmony remote.In summary, this is a superior device, especially if you want to do something a little off the norm. Highly recommend the Harmony Elite system.

Excellent remote system and a worthy replacement to my Harmony One.This is an excellent remote system and after doing my research I don't think there is a better one on the market. It really consists of two devices, the remote and the hub, and I will review both in turn.The remote itself feels comfortable and solidly built. The back is covered with a non slip surface and has some slight contouring that makes it comfortable to hold. On the front, all of the physical buttons are easily reached with my thumb and using the remote feels natural. The touch screen at the top can easily switch back and forth between your "activities" (see below) and your devices.The remote is programmed with an app on your phone. It was able to scan my network (over WiFi) and automatically add many of my devices. The remaining devices were easy to add. It has an immense database of devices which included things like my Kinivo HDMI Switch, which I thought I would have to program into the remote myself. If you have an older Harmony remote you can import your old settings into the new remote, but I was unable to accomplish this as I had not updated my old Harmony One in years. That being said, it was probably for the best as the two remotes have minor differences about them that made a fresh set up worthwhile.Something to be aware of is that the remote does not directly control things, as it does not have an IR blaster. Rather it connects to the Harmony Hub via RF and the hub controls the devices. This has a couple of advantages. The first being that the hub can be placed near the devices to be controlled and second is that you don't need line of sight between the remote and the device to be controlled. By way of example, you don't have to point the remote at anything to control it and I can also carry the remote into the kitchen with me and pause what I'm watching in another room.As indicated the remote controls the hub, which in turn controls your devices. The hub consists of a central IR Blaster as well as two "remote" blasters. The remote blasters are attached to the hub via a wire. I keep the hub on the shelf with most of my AV equipment. I then placed one of the remote blasters in a cabinet that contains the rest of my AV equipment. The second blaster is placed on my TV stand in order to reach a awkwardly placed IR receiver on the TV. The blasters and hub are strong, and I once put into position I have yet to have a single device miss a command from the hub. The blaster in the cabinet is strong enough to bounce the commands off of the walls of the cabinet and hit every device in there. In addition to sending IR commands, the hub is also capable of sending RF commands for my XBox One and Roku Premier+.Where the Harmony system really shines is with activities. An activity is a set of conditions for each of your devices and after entering all of my devices the remote suggested a number of activities to set up. As an example, one of my activities is "Netflix" and when I select the "Netflix" activity it will turn on my TV and set the correct input, turn on my a/v receiver and set the correct inputs, make any necessary changes to the input on my HDMI Switch and set my Roku to Netflix. When done the remote knows that the directional and selection buttons should control the Roku but the volume buttons control my receiver. It will allow you to set up and create activities for certain devices such as "Watch Blue-ray" or even specific channels on a cable box or in my case a Roku (i.e. "HBO).Finally the Harmony Elite and hub work flawlessly with the Amazon Echo. There are two Alex skills for the remote, one of which allows for commands such as "Alexa tell harmony to pause" and one which allows certain commands to be done in more natural language such as "Alexa turn on Netflix". I still need the remote to scroll through selections, but I have found the functionality that is available to be quite useful. It's really convenient to tell Alexa to pause what I'm watching when I get up to get something or to raise or lower the volume when I can't figure out what I did with the remote. There is also a command to turn off the entertainment center which shuts everything off when I am done for the day.I am extremely happy with the Harmony Elite and hub and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a top of the line remote system for their entertainment center.