The Harmony One is just a better hardware than the Harmony 895, so no difference there. It has less buttons, mostly because the little LCD has a touch sensitive area around the screen (where the 895 had like 10 buttons). The software for all Logitech Harmony RCs seems to be the same too.
The Harmony 1000 is what I tried next. It is quite expensive, about 400 EURs. You get the same software but a real touchscreen. Quick summary: It's not worth it.
After only half a day, I already hate the Logitech software. There is no single thing that I could name, it's all bad. The user interface is amateurish and navigating it is very very awkward. There are also some things you just can't do.
For example, I thought it would be a good idea to create an activity (a macro) called I'm going to bed, turn everything off
. That doesn't seem to be possible. Any device that you select to be part of an activity first TURNS ITSELF ON when the activity is selected. Well, you can configure everything so that devices that are NOT used for a particular activity are turned off. So I thought I'm smart and created an activity without ANY devices, hoping that if I would switch to that activity, it would turn everything off. Nope, that's just a broken setup
because there are no devices selected and you can't transfer this activity to the remote.
OK, so that makes the whole thing unusable because I need to keep the old remotes around just to turn everything off. Wait! You can always stop using the activities and just access the plain IR commands of any devices directly. You pick a device on the remote from a list, then you get pages and pages (12 for my AV receiver) of alphabetically sorted buttons with IR command names. So to turn everything off, I'd have to go into each list and find the PwrOff or PwrToggle command.
Well, still doable if you are really determined. Except that the PwerToggle for my TV doesn't seem to work. The IR command is probably wrong. So I tried to change that in the setup software on my computer. Surprise, all you get when you click that option option is Call help desk
. The last would be to try the IR Learn
mode but somehow I don't feel like this is worth it.
My conclusion is that this Logitech universal remote stuff is at best average. The software is horrible and besides the IR command database there is no value there. All I want is a simple button to IR-command-macro mapping, this doesn't exist. The flagship product, the Harmony 1000, costs more than two iPod touch and it still feels like last-century technology.
It turns out they even have a patent on this technology, see here. Amazing how you can make a simple thing so complicated.
OK, so it's me and not the remote. If you press the power button ON THE REMOTE, it tries to turn everything off (if it isn't out of sync and turns shit on again then). I didn't even consider that button because I thought it turns the remote off, something you'd never do with a regular remote.
But the software just crashed my Mac completely, something I haven't seen or a few years now. So the Logitech shit goes back in the box never to be seen again.