After spending all night figuring out how to configure these devices and seeing all the custom configuration options, I’ve finally gotten the hang of setting these up.
History
By far, the best feature they have is Home Assistant integration. The first go I had last year, I did everything in Home Assistant and left nothing up to the remote. That obviously caused issues.
This time around, I configured everything on the remote and only got entities from Home Assistant as-needed.
Benefits
Ergonomics
The pros and cons are all over the place. I think the Harmony Elite remotes I’ve used for years are more ergonomic, fit better in the charging stations, and have nice clicky buttons that feel incredible and are right where you want them.
I can’t say the same for the Unfolded Circle Remote 3, but it’s not all bad. It does feel nice in your hand, and the buttons do work, they’re just not even close to as good as the Harmony Elite in terms of feel.
Media Player integration
The Remote 3 is newer, and with that comes a lot of neat tricks the Harmony could never do such as integrating with media players. It even displays the movie poster or music album on the screen and a progress meter that you can actually click.
There’s a seek “button”… It’s a weird slider thing that gives you a unique way to control stuff. I haven’t used it much, but I think it’d be good for volume.
Touch screen
The touch screen is way better than the Harmony Elite. Super responsive and higher resolution (meaning more can fit on the screen).
Low latency
It’s got nearly no lag on my Shield. It’s noticeable enough that my 7-year-old pointed it out (my wife didn’t). That’s because the remote itself is the hub. The remote only talks to the docks when it needs to do some IR, serial, or 12V trigger commands.
Customizability
While I don’t like the buttons as much, they do work, and there are a lot of options. EVERYTHING is reprogrammable. Since it’s all local, it’s much faster too to program the remotes (the UI isn’t very intuitive until you learn it).
No waiting on Logitech’s servers or having the hub randomly disappear from your network for who knows what reason. While the remotes are Wi-Fi, the docks are Ethernet. The Remote 3 also supports 5GHz. Nice for me since I literally have hundreds of 2.4GHz smart devices.
Integrations
You can integrate tons of devices with the Remote 3 without crashing it. When I tried integrating my lights in the Harmony, 10 years ago, it completely crashed and had to be factory reset.
The Harmony system simply wasn’t designed for a smart home, but the Remote 3 has a Home Assistant integration, and that unlocks tons of things that are tough to do in the remote itself. It also means you don’t need as many remote-specific integrations. It’s all trade-offs.
Lessons Learned
The biggest thing I learned this time around is you don’t need IR. I plugged in all these cables and IR transmitters and realized I didn’t need any of that.
As weird as it sounds, my LG TV and Marantz Receiver are both connected to Ethernet, so no IR is required. Going further, I don’t need IR for the Nvidia Shield nor the Windows PC. Both use Bluetooth directly from the remote.
When I set up my projector this weekend (also Ethernet connected), we’ll see if I need IR in that room or not. I’m surprised at how I wasted money on these IR docks only to realize the charging ones are more valuable as they allow you to put the remote in more places.
Conclusion
While I have a ton of gripes with the Remote 3, I can say that it will eventually, finally get me off the Harmony Elite I’ve been using for the last 12 years.
It adds so many new features that I always needed like the ability to turn on and off my PC using an ESP32, the ability to see the receiver volume when in PC mode (because there’s no overlay for reduced lag), and the ability to turn on or off the lights in the room without a separate Zigbee remote that I have to hide from my kids.
So while it has quirks, and they’re really bad quirks, the benefits are great once you get the thing set up!
P.S. Once I integrate it with Music Assistant, that’ll be yet another reason to keep it. It’s one of those features I really need, but it’s hard to find a dedicated device. But since it has all these features and integrations, that makes it perfect for this use case!
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