I have both a 550 and an 880. I recommend them unreservedly, as I no longer get my wife asking me to please set things up so she can watch a DVD, play the PS2, etc. Babysitters can work them as well, which is another big plus since it's a long drive out to our house but we can offer the perk of the big screen.

The only time I get out the old remote is if I want to do a bunch of stuff with non-standard buttons that are only available as soft buttons on the Harmony. For instance, I got some new speakers and was screwing around with a bunch of different settings on the receiver. I could have done it all with the Harmony but the buttons were more conveniently located on the original remote. This type of situation happens pretty rarely though.

Special buttons can be programmed. I wish there were a few more dedicated buttons for Tivo/DVR. For instance, on the 550, there are dedicated A/B buttons for my DVR but no C. The 880 has none of these so I have them all as soft buttons.

About the worst thing I can say is that the battery life on the 880 is pretty poor and the recharging dock is touchy; it can take a few attempts before it properly connects to the remote.

Minuses on the 550 - I think the shape and button locations are less ergonomic than the 880, especially for finding buttons by touch. But considering how much less it costs than the 880 these are pretty minor issue to me.

I bought the Xbox 360 Harmony remote (apparently what the 550 is based on), and it's been wonderful. I will say that while it functions well, ergonomically it's a mixed bag. The number keys are rather small and uncomfortable to press, and the under-side isn't contoured specifically to fit into anything that I can think of. More than that, there's really no good "story" if, like me, you sometimes use a receiver for audio and sometimes just use the TV's built-in speakers. They'd have to be entered as two separate Activities and the web application that's used to set up the remote always feels clunky.

- It works as advertised, and you can create soft buttons for anything that doesn't map onto the keys themselves. On the '360 version, that's usually just oddities like Settings (when it's not the same as Menu), PgUp/PgDn, and A/B/C for my DVR, and the Thumb and TiVo buttons on a TiVo. Just get a model that's 1) comfortable and 2) has lots of hard buttons (you can custom map all of them if needed).
- On the '360 version, there's a button clearly labelled "Back" that serves the skip-back function well. Many of the models are designed with PVRs in mind and have a similar button.
- For the amount of things it can control, I think the asking price is very reasonable. My Harmony was once setup for a Scientific Atlanta 8000 DVR, a TiVo, a XP Media Center PC, the Media Center Extenders for both the original Xbox [great for XBMC, btw] and the Xbox 360, my good ol' SD TV, a DVD Recorder, and my Joyteq A/V switch, all at the same time.

Think of it like buying a good mouse or high-end keyboard--this is the main peripheral you're going to use all of the time, day-in, day-out, to run your setup.

I have the 659, also. It's great. Very happy.

Gotta go. I shouldn't even be reading this, but I'm so hopelessly addicted to GWJ.

I'm eyeballing the 520 myself, but I'm not entirely sure I need it. At present moment, I only have two devices that it could control - the TV and our Motorola cable box (unless it can be programmed to turn on/turn off the PS2 as well). My dear fiancee has the unfortunate habit of putting things down and instantly forgetting that she's done so, which means we're forced to get up and change the channel by hand (oh, the horror!). We've tried the "really long stick" approach, and it's just not working for us; ergo, I want a Harmony remote. I'd rather buy a quality, programmable remote than some cheapo Wal-Mart-brand "universal replacement," but I'm not altogether sure we really need a $100 remote to change channels and turn the TV and cable box on and off simultaneously. Any thoughts?

Also, do any of you Harmony owners also have Comcast? Is it possible to program the remote to service-specific options like OnDemand?

My 360 Harmony does everything I need for the Cablevision's DVR (a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4900hd I think).

After reading this thread I was did some looking around. Saw the 880 is being sold on Logitechs website for $250 and thought that was a little steep. So I hit up NewEgg and they got it for $200 which is more like it. So then I hit up Amazon just to see, expecting it to be closer to the $250.. and there's no price listed. I scratch my head and then notice they have some notice that they can't display the price because it's soooo low the manufacturer asked them not to advertise it. Okay, whatever. Nice marketing gimick, so I click on the "Show me the price" link. $155!! I have no idea what this normally goes for in brick & mortar but that seems like a good deal to me. I'm extremely tempted to pick this thing up. I currently switch between 4 remotes depending on what I'm doing. Drives my wife crazy.

I really want one of these now. I didn't this morning, didn't even know what it was. Thanks guys, this purchase will go over well

I feel your pain. I'm highly suspectible to people on this site for some reason. Edwin and his Dell 2005FPW thread (of which I now own two, well a 2005FPW and now a 2407FPW) and now this thing. I've been living just fine without one for a long time. But now... now... I broke down and just ordered it. I don't know what the hell is up with Amazon but the price went up $3 from the time I posted earlier and when I just ordered it (3 hours). Anyway, I was going back and forth with the 880 versus 890. Strangely, Logitech has a comparison chart on their website but it only goes up to the 880 compared to the older models. I couldn't find a feature comparison between the 880 and 890 anywhere. After reading back and forth about them, I think the only real difference is the 890 features RF signals so you can still operate your equipment when it's behind a cabinet or from another room if you wanted. If that's the difference of $100, then no thanks, I can handle only using IR and needing a direct line of sight.

I was also tempted by the 1000, but I just can't justify spending $500 on a remote. Though I was tempted just because I've always wanted to have one like that, completely touch screen, ever since I saw Ozzy trying to get his to work and muttering curse words and mumbling to himself for 20 minutes trying to figure out how to turn his TV on until he started yelling "Shaaaaron!". I miss that show.

Yup, that's the only difference.

Yoyoson, there is a non-wizard interface for adding/remove commands to the activities. Maybe you haven't looked at the software in a while? Once you've stepped through the wizard to set things up initially you can go back in and customize everything. It's still pretty sugar coated GUI but it gives you fine-grained control.

Touchscreen remotes aren't for everybody. I've had a Pronto for almost six years now I guess and I'm fairly certain my next remote will be a hard button (with LCD display, I'm looking at a Universal Remote MX-850) remote. It's faster to program when you don't have to design the screens and the tactile feedback is a good thing. I've come to the conclusion that a touchscreen remote is only good if it's a two-way remote. I've never gotten around to dedicating a PDA to Netremote yet though.

The UPS guy just dropped off my 880. It looks very sexy (the remote, not the UPS guy). I'll have to wait until I get home to actually give it a go though, so I'll post some actual use impressions later, but having opened the box and taken a look here's some initial observations.

The remote lays horizontal in a long charging cradle. I had expected it to be something with less of a footprint and the remote would stand vertical while charging. Not that big a deal really. Also, the location of the numeric pad is very awkward for one-handed use. You either have to operate the remote 2-handed or you have to hold it one-handed one way to operate the buttons at the bottom and then shift your grip higher up to use any of the buttons at the top. Again, not a big deal and will probably just take some getting used to.

I ordered the 670 from Amazon for about $95, I can't wait to try it out. I have 4-5 remotes right now and it's a pain in the ass.

I just wish Harmony 360 knew how to send trigger/shoulder commands to 360

Another related thread:
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/29613

Damn, this thread blew up over the past few days! Vega's covered a bunch, and I don't know if any of what I am about to say carries over to the 800 series, but this has been my impression with the 670 over the past weekend.

The 670 remote is nicely specialized for DVR use. Nearly every function that was on my old TiVo remote is on this one. I had even gone to the trouble of programming soft buttons (buttons on the screen) for the Replay and Skip functions before realizing that they were already programmed and convenient to use! You can also program the remote to send any possible signal to the television on an activity's selection, or on its exit. For example, we almost exclusively listen to the XM channels that are pkgd with the Satellite, so we just set the Play Music activity to switch to one of our preferred channels when the button is hit. When we select another activity, it just resets the tuner to first available TV channel. There's a lot more that can be customized, too. I just haven't thought of what to do with it yet.

Also, when you are setting up your components for the first time, you only have to enter the component once. My Denon is both my DVD Player and my Receiver, so I had entered it twice, thinking that the context mattered. It doesn't. In fact, it causes unpredictable results.

A couple of cons/annoyances:
- It seems to default to ~1000ms delays between commands out of the box, so you have to keep the remote pointed at the components until it gets through its tasklist, which is typically anywhere between 4-7 tasks long. If you don't do this, it gets derailed, and you have to use help to get back on track. I tried handing it to my father without telling him this minor detail, and he managed to get completely messed up. You can adjust the time it waits between issuing commands, so I'm going to fool around with this, and try to get it working to my satisfaction.

- The software insists upon setting the antenna input to a channel (3, 4, or user spec) when it gets selected. I wish I could have it select the antenna input without the channel selection because my TV never leaves channel 3. It's just a pointless step that it takes when running through an activity's tasks. I've looked to see if I can disable this anywhere, but I haven't yet found anything.

- I've noticed the TV volume doing the same thing Vega described, but since I typically set the volume through the receiver, it isn't much of an issue. The nice thing is that I was able to switch component control, so even though my primary sound component when watching TV is the receiver, I can still adjust the TV's volume (or typically Mute) without much hassle.

All in all though, a totally kickass remote. Not as sexy as the 880/890, but also at least half the price. It's been fun to play with, but I still would like to tweak it some more before I'm completely happy with it.