In most homes, a universal remote makes a lot of sense. The coffee table, or the side table in the bedroom is usually cluttered with lots of remotes. Replacing all with one remote is ideal. But, the question still remains - is it a utility or a luxury? In the case of the Logitech Harmony 1100i, I am strongly leaning on the side of luxury.

Look & Feel

This is a universal remote that bucks the trend when it comes to the design. The square design houses a 3.5-inch touchscreen (320x240 pixel resolution) display, that allows a whole lot of traditional buttons to be done away with. The touchscreen is the resistive type, by the way. Next to it is a bunch of hardware buttons - volume, channel, mute, navigation, select and return. Quite welcome, since using the touchscreen to control the most critical tasks like changing channels of controlling the volume would have been a pain. However, you will have to use the display to select the activity, and any advanced tasks/ features that may be applicable to any individual device that you may have configured. Since there is limited space on the screen, you are talking about 3-4 layers on an average, and can even go up to 7 screens like it did for our LED TV. Going forwards and backwards on them is a bit of an exercise, and by the end of it, you do tend to lose your way a little bit. In such a scenario, calmly work your way across, and not press the Activities button by mistake.

On the sides of the display are tactile guides that attempt to guide you as to where the keys are on the display. But we don’t really see any purpose of that, since we are dealing with a touchscreen here. No amount of guidance will help, you will have to look at the display when using it.

The wow factor is the most loaded thing about the Logitech Harmony 1100i Advanced Universal Remote. The square design is finished with the glossy black colour on the front and a rubberized finish at the back. This is the biggest difference when compared its predecessor, the Harmony 1000, which had a silver body and had blue backlighting for the buttons instead of white. A part of the rear panel slides out completely, allowing access to the battery bay. This remote uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. There is the neat charging dock that the 1100 can recline on to, and takes about 2 hours to fully charge a completely drained battery.

While this form factor will grab attention siting on the coffee table in the living room, it is certain that using the Logitech Harmony 1100i Advanced Universal Remote will be very different from the usual conventional remotes. And will take some getting used to.