- We all have way to many remote controls at home.
Now universal remotes aren't anything new.
They've been around for a long time, but they've also
kinda sucked for a long time, right?
Until now, I finally found something I like.
Let's go take a look, but first be sure to subscribe.
Now you ready? Remotes, let's go.
(modern music)
So let's start in the bedroom, as we always should.
In the bedroom, I'm using the Logitech Harmony Companion.
So this one's 150 dollars.
Not inexpensive for a universal remote for sure.
So this actually is probably my favorite
designed device that I've ever used.
The design and the curves of this are beautiful.
I love the way they did the Companion.
It feels really good to hold.
I actually kind of want it to be a phone. Try it.
Go to a store, you'll see exactly what I'm talking --
Hello, yes, I'd like to -- no sell, not buy, sell.
It really is that comfortable; feels great.
Now, this is sort of just your typical
remote control, right?
It has buttons and it has buttons.
There are no displays on it.
There's no touchscreen.
It's relatively simple in that respect.
But once you set it up with your phone,
you can pretty much do whatever you want
with these buttons.
It's a remote control.
You have numbers down on the bottom which actually
I never even use anymore since I've cut cable
and don't change directly from a channel number
to another channel number.
The really cool thing up here though are the smart buttons.
So, I can control connected lights
and connected outlets with the remote control
which is great especially in the bedroom.
Late at night I want to turn the lights off,
but I don't want to have to yell over to Alexa,
"Hey Alexa, turn off all the lights."
So I just do it straight from the remote here
Super simple, love it.
Now this one is not rechargeable.
It does have a battery down on the bottom.
And It's just one of those little button batteries.
You can buy these anywhere, so that's helpful.
I haven't actually changed it out yet,
so it's lasted a while, but eventually yes
I will have to change it.
Again, 150 dollars.
Not cheap, but it works great.
This is definitely the first one
I would recommend you try.
So this is the Harmony Elite.
This is what I've been using in the living room.
Ant I tell ya, I like it a lot out there for this reason,
and this is what makes it so expensive:
It has a touch screen.
It has a display right here and once you get it all setup
it will show all your devices right there
in the touch screen.
It will show all your activities,
and it makes it really easy for anybody
whether it's your wife, your kids, whoever.
They can see exactly what devices they're going to be using
and what activities they can launch.
So that's really cool and that makes it even easier.
And for common area like a living room
it makes a lot more sense.
You can still control smart lights and
connected outlets with these button down on the bottom.
You have a D-pad, you have play-pause, all that stuff.
But really, it's the addition of the touch screen
that makes this one good chunk more expensive
at 350 dollars.
This is not a cheap remote control.
So this one is rechargeable.
It plugs into the base very simply,
but it also makes it really easy to find the remote
when it's in the charger, so good deal.
And you just charge when you need to.
Another important piece of all this is the hub.
So this is what let's the remote
do anything with the connected products.
With Philip Hue lights, Wemo outlets --
two things we've looked at by the way.
And the way it works is the remote will then
talk to the hub, the hub talks to the internet,
and that fires off the commands to your connected devices.
So the remote fires off to this,
this fires off to any other devices that
the remote can't necessarily see by line of sight.
So setup is where universal remotes used to be a huge pain.
I've done some really bad ones over the years,
and even Logitech's previous generation was
a little more difficult than I liked it to be.
You had to plug it in to the computer
and do everything that way and then wait for it to sync.
Well now we have smartphones and that pretty much
takes care of everything here.
It's all gonna be done on your phone
all through the Harmony app.
You're going to setup all your devices.
You can add them manually or
it will pluck them out of your wifi
and add them automatically which is kind of cool.
And then you'll take those devices and create activities.
So, groups of devices and tell things how to work together.
You can also use the phone app to control everything.
You don't even need the remotes.
You say, "Alright, when I watch TV I want you
to turn on the TV and set it to this input.
I want you to turn the receiver or
turn on the soundbar or whatever.
And then turn on this other streaming box."
Whatever devices you need, it'll set them up
in the right order and then let you tweak things as needed.
My only real complaint here is that it's kinda slow.
It's slow to sync, it's a little slow to log in,
and the menus go really deep.
There are a whole bunch of options
and a whole bunch of different ways to change things
and every now-and-then I kinda forget where things are.
So that's it. That's what I'm using in my living room has
made watching TV and using all these boxes
and devices so much simpler.
Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe.
See ya next time.
(modern music)