The Harmony 880 Universal remote is the newest in the Harmony family of web programmable activity based remotes. The Harmony line up is the only remote I know of that looks at the functionality of using a remote as an activity rather than steps of buttons to be pressed. I'm not talking about programming numerous macro's, I'm talking about login online, entering the models numbers of the devices you own and selecting activities you'd like to perform with these devices. For example "watch TV", "watch DVD", "play video", "listen to radio" etc.... The web based programming utility realizes what needs to be done based on the equipment you own to do any specific activity. In my case lets look at the example of watching a DVD:

I press "Watch DVD" the remote does the following:
-turns the TV on
-sets the TV to video 5 (component input)
-turns on the receiver
-sets the receiver to DVD
-turns on the DVD player
-plays the DVD

It's really very impressive when you look at all the activities you'd normally perform with a remote, or sets of remotes and consider that with merely one remote and a minimum of 1/2 hour one remote can replace all of that functionality with no "manufacturer code" research and programming typical of universal remotes. Again in my case the Harmony replaced 12 individual remotes.

I am a second time Harmony customer and although I was very satisfied with my previous Harmony product, the Harmony SST-688 I was excited to hear that the Harmony 880 was in the works, the 880 is the fist Harmony product released and developed fully by Logitech since Harmony's acquisition by Logitech.

Instead of rehashing all of the features and principles of the Harmony products that I pointed out in detail in my review of the SST-688, I'll focus on the improvements and missing features of the 880 remote.

It is important to point out I was very happy with my Harmony SST-688. It's few drawbacks were as follows:
-The 688 had no "back" button, if you were a few pages into a menu, or browsing through your TV listings or CD database and you missed your selection, you'd have to start all over again.
-The 688 ate batteries like they were free. It was not uncommon to go through a brand new set of 4 x AAA in less than two months (Energizer or Duracell)
-The buttons were extremely small, certain ones such "7" or "9" were almost unmanageable. I can't imagine someone with large hands trying to use it.

Here's where the Harmony 880 enters the picture. I waited a long time to get my hands on one of these. I had registered with Logitech to be on their mailing list so I'd know when the 880's release was announced. When it came out I got one within days. I was mostly attracted to two of it's new features (i)Rechargeable, replaceable Lithium Ion battery w/charging station and (ii)Cool but unnecessary colour screen.

Now with the background out of the way, my opinion:

The design of the 880 is much more user friendly in my opinion. The button layout is laid out much better. PVR/Cable box functions, CD/DVD/PVR/VCR operation controls and numerical keypad are all grouped into three respective clusters. The buttons are much larger than the 688, and Logitech has switched from the opaque rubber buttons to hard plastic buttons with opaque characters (for backlight purposes). The five way navigator button is seemingly much more durable than the often complained about 688's was, but the channel +/- and volume +/- are still a little small. The 880 offers 8 assignable buttons alongside the screen vs. the 6 the 688 offered. The remote itself is still shaped as a dumbbell like most of the Harmony line-up, and that works well in my opinion. The remote reading lens (for programming raw remote codes) at the bottom of the 880 now has a protective lens to protect and spruce up the look of the remote where the 688 just had a hole and a lens.

The rechargeable battery seems to work great. Even leaving the remote out of the base station for days and days, it's still only 1/3 used. With somewhat regular intervals of charging in the base station overnight, I'm sure that amount of charging will suffice for most users.

The colour screen is a nice improvement. By no means is it high resolution, but it's better than a monochrome LCD no matter how basic in my opinion. The background of the colour screen is somewhat customizable. So far there are three options for standard "theme" backgrounds, or you can upload your own low res photo. You can also upload up to 8 low res pictures for slide shows, the slide show runs automatically when the remote is in the base station or when manually activated. Just as the 688 offered, the buttons along side the screen are assignable, but now there is finally a back button. The bottom of the screen notes for example "page 1 of 2" for as many screens worth of assignable buttons you want to program.

Remote functionality and programmability is exact same as the Harmony SST-688. All programming is done online at the Harmony site, and just as with the 688 getting it tweaked to exactly as you like requires much trial and error. Programmability in it's most simplistic expectations is very easy, it's the fine tuning that requires time.

Now for the few improvements that need to be made, thankfully they are all problems that in my opinion are able to be solved by future firmware updates. At time of writing this review there were no available firmware updates yet available. First, the TV listing feature by cable carrier that was previously available is no longer available, instead 16 favorite channels can be stored. The beauty of this is you can assign a channel icon to each of the 16 favorite channels, I was able to find some very high quality icons online! This feature loss didn't matter so much to me, but to some it may. Secondly and more importantly to me is the CD (or DVD) database functionality. Although this feature still exists, a feature where you can upload a .csv file of all your CD's in a mega changer (in my case two Sony 400 disc changers), the functionality of the "Media" searchability is more difficult. Previously in the 688 all like artists were combined, then once selected their individual albums would be listed. This still is true with the 880, but with the 688 any artist that only had one album would still be listed as artist, but when selected would play their only CD. Now unfortunately the 880 only lists the album name of the artists with only one album, not showing the artist name. This little issue sounds insignificant, but imagine with 800 CD's in my collection how many "Greatest Hits" named albums I have, there is no way to know which one your selecting when the artists name is not displayed. Lastly, the remote organizes the different "devices" and "activities" on the colour screen in no particular order, not alphabetically, or in order they have been entered. This is particularly annoying when you have 12 devices with 10 activities. In my case my TV and the activity of "watching TV" are both listed on page 2 of 2 on the menu. In reality the TV is probably the device and activity I use most! I've talked to the Harmony support about each of these issues and they are aware of all of them. They currently are indicating that a future firmware update will resolve these issues, lets hope so.