One For All Xsight Touch

At long last - one that works well! – I came to this from the frustration of the Logitech Harmony 525 and am so glad I did! One simple, thoughtful, and convenient feature trumps the Harmony so completely, as to be a most compelling single reason to buy the XSight Touch: the volume control can be tethered to a particular device, even when the remote is toggled to another. For example, when I want to control the software on my Home Theatre PC, I can do that, but the volume control remains with my receiver. No need to push buttons to go back and forth between devices!

The touch screen is a boon and the large buttons are backlit and easy to find and use. there are some smaller buttons that are just plain fiddly, but once you are familiar with the remote, this becomes less concerning. My wife finds it easy and quick to locate what she wants.

There is a quick set up routine for it straight from the box, but I didn't give it much attention although it seemed to work okay. The real power that this remote gives you is in the setup software.

The process is quite similar to Logitech's products but here the software is web browser-driven and this is the worst feature of the product: it uses Internet Explorer exclusively, an inferior browser and not one I use habitually. This software is a little tiring to use for it has its own, regimented way of working and at times hard to find settings that slows the process down, but much of what I needed was easy to find and use. Familiarity makes things much quicker.

That is the remote's worst feature, so it is hardly a severe handicap.

My XSight Touch came with a sticker proclaiming tech support for *free* and indeed it is very good, with courteous, knowledgeable, and helpful staff on the other end of the phone.

If you read my review of the Logitech product, and note the shortcomings that device has, I can say they are non-existent in the XSight Touch. Even the setup software is more user-friendly, allowing quick customizations of command lists.

Sure, the browser-based setup is restrictive - especially if you're in the 15% or so of the world that don't use Windows, and this is a black mark, perhaps the only one.

The remote can be programmed to have a separate "button" on the touch screen for TV stations, complete with logs - a very sweet feature, and it can also be personalized for different people, but this seems somewhat frivolous.

Apart from that, it's a great device with very few shortcomings. So glad I got it. Easy to use, volume control tethering; station selection buttons; very customizable Needs IE to setup; a few issues with setup software