Disclosure: I'm a member of a word of mouth campaign, and the Harmony One remote I'll be writing about here was given to me for free. I get to keep it whatever I say, and in fact I'm encouraged to say exactly what I think about it, whether I think it's good or bad. I promise to do exactly that.

I bought my Logitech Harmony 659 remote from Amazon in January of 2006. The $95 Amazon charged me for it at the time was a very good deal, and I remember my excitement at the thought of upgrading to it from the pretty but garbage All-For-One Kameleon I had been using previously.

To rewind just a little, Kameleon was like a high-minded art school student's pet project; pretty, rule-breaking, expensive, and difficult to use as intended. It had a blank blue face. It was meant to turn on and show the available buttons when picked up, and sometimes that worked fine. More often though, it would turn itself on while sitting still on a coffee table, or I'd pick it up and it wouldn't turn on without a good hard shake. Because of this, it sucked batteries down vigorously.

To add to those issues, the flat, featureless face of the Kameleon remote made it impossible to use without looking at the thing. Even if you had your thumb right where a button was, you'd have to press the button once to turn the remote on, and then press it again to send the command, and odds are your thumb had slipped by that time and you weren't just perfectly on the button, and no command would be sent at all. The Kameleon was an extremely frustrating remote for me to use, and I'm glad that I got a Harmony.

When I did get the Harmony, I loved it immediately. The software to set it up on my PC was easy to use, all of my devices took commands from its powerful IR LED array every time, and batteries lived a reasonably long life inside it, even though its monochrome LCD screen never turned off.

So when I was offered the new Harmony One to test and review recently, I jumped on it quick. I don't want to give away too much too quickly, but I'll say now that I'm glad I did. I like this remote. Here are the pros and cons, ArsTechnica style.

The Good:

• Fits well in the hand (just like the Harmony 659).
• Controls all of my devices (just like the Harmony 659).
• One-touch activities work great (just like the 659).
• Knows the time and date.
• Has a rechargeable Li-ion battery with a good charge life, and comes with a charging base and wall wart.
• The pretty color screen really stands out, makes tasks a little easier to get to.
• Uses the same standard mini USB cable as the previous remote and most other modern devices.

The Bad:

• If you remove the battery, the remote forgets the date and time.
• The Remote Assistant program on the remote is annoying and useless (But it's easy to turn off).
• The Logitech Harmony software no longer runs in a browser; it's now a dedicated app (I liked it in a browser better).

The Ugly:

• The Harmony software would not allow me to have two remotes (the Harmony 659 and the Harmony One) with two different configurations in one account. I had to create a new Harmony user account in order to keep my original Harmony 659 configuration untouched and create a new one for my Harmony One. Who knows if I'll remember the new user/password?
• HarmonyRemote.exe uses 155MB of RAM and does not close itself when you're done. Watch for this in your Task Manager.
• The software will not tell you the model numbers of the devices you've already programmed in. I couldn't just look at my Harmony 659's configuration to get the model numbers, I had to walk to the living room, write them all down, and come back to the PC to get it done.
• Some idiot at Logitech decided that the user sessions should expire in the configuration software. I spent twenty minutes entering in model numbers, had to go to the living room for one I had forgotten, and when I got back and entered it in, the software kicked me back to the login page. The model numbers I had entered were gone, and I had to enter them again. This made me very, very angry.

Overall, it's a great remote. Not perfect, or even close to it. But it's very good.

I think it's very telling that all of the items in the Ugly list apply to the Harmony software, not the Harmony Remote itself. It seems pretty clear that there's a discrete team for each, and the Harmony software guys are way behind their hardware counterparts in usability.

Verdict: Buy, but wait until the price comes down just a bit. The current $250 price tag isn't quite justified with the remote's flaws, especially in the software arena.