It’s pretty… but it can also be pretty frustrating.

The Harmony 1100 remote is a sight to behold. The 3.5-inch touchscreen is bright and clear, and its tablet-style design made us feel like we were piloting a spaceship, not just watching Spaceballs again. With its extensive database of components, and (ostensibly) simple programming interface, the Harmony is a workable solution for users who are drowning in remotes. And while the touchscreen definitely offers style points, in real-world usage, it’s a less than ideal way to control your home media empire.

The appeal of universal remotes is obvious. Currently, our modest media setup requires three separate remotes just to watch a DVD. Pulling the Harmony 1100 from the box, we were giddy at the prospect of finally being able to control everything with one clicker. And since the Harmony features a rechargeable battery and charging cradle, we were looking forward to no longer having to scramble to find AAA batteries when one of the remotes dies.

Programming the Harmony to work with your AV gear is supposed to be a simple matter. The interface is based on Activities, which power up the appropriate components and switch inputs, making going from live TV to watching a DVD a one-button affair. Firing up the Harmony software on our Mac, we entered information about our existing components and defined several Activities for the remote. Once we set up our Activities, we connected the remote to our Mac with the included USB cable--and nothing happened. Turns out, syncing information to your remote requires you to turn your firewall off completely, exposing your Mac to the Internet at large--a sketchy situation at best. Once we jumped that hurdle, the Harmony software downloaded appropriate commands for our equipment from Logitech’s database.

After our first try, the remote successfully recognized our television, TiVo, and DVD player. We had to make minor corrections, using the Harmony’s onboard Remote Assistant, but the basic functionality was there. In addition to the touchscreen, the right side of the Harmony features hard buttons for channel and volume; an up, down, left, right directional control; and other basic functions. Getting the remote to correctly control an older Denon audio mini-system was basically trial and error that resulted in less than full control of the stereo. Logitech’s database identified some new video-streaming hardware, but we could never get those controls to work properly, even after multiple attempts at manually programming the Harmony via its “learning” capability.

We love the idea of the 1100, but the touchscreen was more eye-candy than anything else. It was fine for watching DVDs, or other situations that require minimal interaction with the remote. Controlling a TiVo from the Harmony was an exercise in frustration. Skipping commercials requires watching the TV screen, but even after heavy use, we couldn’t reliably resume playback after fast-forwarding without looking down at the remote. And we really missed the button on the TiVo remote that skips back a few seconds, which is missing in Harmony’s TiVo interface. In short, the touchscreen is no substitute for hard buttons and some muscle memory. And overall, despite some tweakable settings, we found the Harmony to be a slowpoke when it came to sending commands to our components.

If you have RF- or Bluetooth-controlled components in your entertainment center, be prepared to shell out additional coin for adapters. While Bluetooth components aren’t that common, we felt that the Harmony should have included the RF adapter--$99 separately--which would allow you to stash electronics behind closed doors, and still be able to control them without a direct line of sight.