Logitech's Harmony remotes have long made it possible to reduce the collection of clickers on your coffee table by combining them into a single Harmony device.
The newest entry, the Harmony Touch, adds a 2.4-inch touch screen. And why not? People must want touch screens, right?
The $250 Touch is a smart looking device, now cleared of busy-looking buttons. But the touch screen did not make it any less work than a device covered with buttons.
That is because to get access to buttons, you have to go through multiple screens. On my old remote, when I want to scroll through the listings a page at a time, I toggle the “Page Up†button. When I want to do the same thing with the Touch, I go from t he watch TV screen, to a command screen, and scroll to the Page Up and Page Down buttons. Or I can go one screen deeper, to the “gestures screen,†then slide a finger up or down to control the onscreen guide.
I often had difficulty getting to the screen I wanted. I'm sure it becomes easier with practice.
A touch screen makes sense when searching for a show, though. Instead of having to toggle around a grid of letters to spell out the title or name, you can type it. But the Touch offers a virtual alphanumeric pad, as on rudimentary mobile phones. To type a C, you go to the number screen, then press the number 2 three times.
The Touch offers some customization that lets you save your 50 favorite channels, making it easy to hop between them.
You can also customize the control gestures, such as what swiping a finger across the screen will do, or change the look of the screen and icons.
One of Harmony's great strengths has been the way the remote is programmed. You connect it to a computer, then enter the makes and models of all your devices. Answer some questions about which devices control which, and you are in business.
But even this process has become harder where it was intended to be easier.
The Harmony setup page doesn't tell you if you can make the easy transfer or not; it will simply fail over and over again for no apparent reason. The people at Logitech said they were working on that. I would suggest a few other things they need to work on, too. For example, why have separate IDs and passwords for the Harmony site and the Harmony devices?
