![]() ![]() If you want a remote that lets you stitch together complex macros that can cascade through your smart home, dimming the lights, closing your shades, and dropping the video projector screen from the ceiling at the touch of a button, you’ll want the more powerful Harmony Elite. The remote itself won’t overwhelm you with buttons and inscrutable icons, but its simplicity does limit what you can do with it. It’s very easy to set up, and it makes the most of Alexa’s ability to control hardware using voice commands. The Harmony Express strikes a good balance between power and complexity. ![]() You can plug as extension IR blaster into the Harmony Express’s primary IR blaster. And the only things you can’t ask Alexa to do via the Harmony Express is to play music and make phone calls using the remote’s speaker. But you’ll encounter so many other situations where the remote control is faster and/or more precise than barking orders at your TV. Once you have the Harmony Express configured to your entertainment center, you can also control all your gear with any member of the Echo family. Instead of holding down the button and saying “Turn on…” you say “Go to Netflix app” or “Go to Hulu app.” In the few days I’ve had access to the Harmony Express, I’ve struggled to remember when to say “Turn on” and when to say “Go to.” I imagine I’ll become accustomed to the difference with experience. It’s just as easy to launch a smart TV app-Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime, et al-with a voice command, although the phrasing is slightly different. Deleting DVR programs with the Express involves more steps, although Logitech says its working to make it easier to use voice commands to perform actions for which no physical button exists on the remote. Deleting every episode of a series can be done just as easily. If I wanted to delete a recording using the DirecTV remote, I could just press the red button and it would be gone. Using the Harmony Express app felt very much like using the DirecTV’s native remote-to a point. The Harmony Express remote has all the basic buttons you would expect to find. I then used the D-pad to move up and down the list until I found what I wanted to watch and pressed the OK button to play it. If I wanted to play a TV program I’d recorded, I could say “Go to DVR” to bring a list of recordings. To change the channel, I just held the button down and said “Go to channel 200” or whatever channel I wanted to watch (the system also recognizes channel names, such as NBC or HBO). In my set-up, holding the button down and saying “Turn on TV” was all I needed to do to power up TV and set-top box and switch the active display to the set-top box. The Harmony Express remote control has a small speaker on its back, so that Alexa can confirm your voice commands. ![]() ![]() Alexa’s voice responds via a small speaker built into the remote. You don’t need to say “Alexa,” either-just holding that center button down for a second or two is enough. Pressing and holding that center button, on the other hand, summons Alexa so you can use voice commands to power on all the devices needed to watch TV, launch a smart TV app (either on your TV or on a streaming box), to control anything else you have Alexa set up to do. The directional pad lets you navigate onscreen menus (up, down left, and right) and pressing the center button selects the highlighted function. The functions of the nine buttons can change depending on which device the remote is actively controlling, but most of them will be universal: Rewind, fast-forward, play/pause, volume up, volume down, and mute. The 5.25-inch-long by 1.75-inch-wide remote has just three rows of three buttons arranged beneath a directional pad encircling a round OK button. The hardware element of the Harmony Express consists of three components: The remote control, a large infrared blaster that you sit in front of your entertainment center, and an IR mini blaster that enables you to control audio and video components that you might have hidden inside a cabinet. The rest of the equipment in your entertainment center appears beneath those ports and you simply drag their icons to the relevant HDMI ports. The remote knows what inputs your TV has-four HDMI ports in my case-and diagrams them in the app. The Harmony Express is designed to control a single entertainment system-focused around your TV-in one room. ![]()
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