One For All URC 7955

Suitable for my needs, but not necessarily yours – I purchased the OFA URC-7955 as a replacement for a Logitech Harmony 650 since Logitech seems to have abandoned remotes. The OFA has turned out to be a suitable replacement and I am moderately satisfied with it, but there are issues which came close to being a dealbreaker for me. Suitability will be mostly determined by whether OFA provides codes for the models of devices you want to control. These codes are available either in the manual, or via the bluetooth app which can be used to download extra codes which are not listed in the manual.

If one of your devices does not have a code, you have the following options:

1. Learn the buttons manually one by one using the learning feature where you point your original remote at the OFA and it learns the infrared signal. Although this procedure is not very user friendly, it is my preferred option as it allows total customisation of button layout. It also lets you control whether a button is a single fire or hold to repeat, which can be essential for certain buttons like volume up/down (otherwise you would have to tap the button many times) or holding arrow keys for scrolling long lists in menus, etc.

Unfortunately the firmware is limited to learning a maximum of about 50 buttons which is only enough for learning one device (40 buttons) with 10 buttons left over for customising buttons on your other devices which do have codes. In my case I got lucky as only one of my devices didn't have a code (Beyonwiz V2 PVR) and the remaining 10 learnable buttons were just enough for my requirements. If they had instead made the learning capacity 200 buttons, this would have allowed all 5 device slots to be learnable (at 40 buttons each) thus removing the dependence on codes, thus guaranteeing compatibility with all remotes and with full customisation of all button layouts for every device. Instead the onboard memory is wasted on storing hundreds of codes for models of devices which I will never use. It would have been nice if they let you overwrite the onboard code memory to make room for more learnable buttons.

2. You can contact customer support and ask to send in your original remote by post and they will create a code for it which will then eventually get added via the bluetooth app. You can also send in your OFA remote as well and they can program it with the new code so you don't have to wait for the code to be eventually uploaded to the bluetooth app.

3. Try setting the bluetooth app to a different country and search the model number of your device (without hyphens it seems). For example I have an Emotiva audio amp which is an American product with no code in the manual or bluetooth app, but it does show up in the app if I set the app country to United States.

Other issues

1. The device slots are needlessly limited to codes within their category. For example suppose you don't use the AUDIO device slot and want to make use of that slot for some other type of device, well you can't because the AUDIO device slot only accepts codes for audio devices. This limitation can be worked around by manually learning all the buttons for the AUDIO device slot, but then the 50 button learning limitation comes into play again.

2. The activity feature is mostly pointless and wastes valuable real estate on the face of the remote. It is also easy to accidentally press the ACTIVITY button when trying to press the neighbouring BACK and EXIT buttons due to lack of contouring of those buttons, and if you do accidentally press ACTIVITY this will put the remote into activity mode, requiring you to put it back into device mode by pressing DEVICES button. This makes it not so user friendly for older users who must be instructed how to know whether they are in activity mode or devices mode. For me personally it's not a dealbreaker, but I have to be careful and put in some conscious effort.

3. It is generally not very easy to feel your way around the remote without glancing down at the remote. I was able to train myself to go by feel, but it requires me to do things like eg. feeling for a corner button and then sliding my finger up while counting the number of buttons I've moved across to get to the desired button. Whereas other remotes tend to use unique shapes and layouts for different categories of buttons which makes it easy to just blindly feel your way around the remote. In the end I was able to train myself to feel my way around, but for an older user I'm not sure it would be acceptable.

4. The general shape and weight distribution of the remote is not very ergonomic. Most remotes tend to put the battery weight at the bottom and have a larger contoured bulge towards the bottom where it's typically held. The OFA has the battery weight in the middle (4xAAA's, not included) and the case gets thin towards the top and bottom sort of like a gondola shape. It just feels a bit odd, although I'm getting used to it and it doesn't seem to bother me that much anymore.

5. The battery door is quite hard to get open, you have to put a lot of pressure on the remote to unlatch the tab. Feels like I am bending the remote in a bad way.

Things I like

1. The button actuators are the clicky type with very little travel. They feel precise and aren't squishy like the rubber membrane type buttons on most remotes which usually end up going bad after a number of years. I suspect these buttons will last a long time, probably longer than the Harmony 650 which needed occasional disassembly and cleaning of the rubber membrane to keep the buttons working over the years.

2. The plastic casing material feels nice to me, it's kind of a low friction matte finish. Although it can slip out of my hand more easily, but this hasn't been an issue for me. Maybe if you have hard floors it could potentially be an issue.

3. The infrared signal is strong enough that you don't have to point it directly at devices. Although it's not quite as strong as the Harmony 650.

4. There is a convenient "volume lock" feature where you select which device controls volume up/down and mute buttons and it will assign those 3 buttons to all other devices. It's a shame they did not also offer an "AV lock" functionality for changing inputs on the TV, but it's not a dealbreaker as it's only 1 extra button to learn for each other device.

Miscellaneous

There appears to be a bug with the learning functionality where the first time I learn a button it sometimes doesn't learn it properly even though the light flashed twice indicating that it learned it properly. I was able to work around this by always making sure to learn the first button twice. So let's say I want to learn the volume up, volume down and mute buttons, my workaround is to learn volume up twice, then volume down, then mute (consecutively, i.e without exiting learning mode in between buttons). As long as the first button is learned twice I haven't had any issues.

BigW sells cheaper OFA models like the Essence4 and Essence8 which I tried first, however I found those have a limitation where fast forward and rewind buttons are not learnable, and I needed to learn them since those models don't have a code for my blu-ray player (the URC-7955 does have a code for it though, thankfully).

In any case I prefer the URC-7955 for its Bluetooth functionality which makes it future proofed in terms of being able to connect to the app and download more codes, such as codes which OFA has added as a result of sending your remote in, or codes for future models of devices. Without this functionality you are limited to whatever codes that model ships with. And you want codes because otherwise you will eat through all your learning button memory. The 50 button learning limit is enough to give you 10 custom buttons for each of the 5 devices. It's clear to me these remotes were designed under the assumption that the user would have a code for each device, with the learning feature added on as a supplement for making tweaks to the button layout provided by the codes.

To the other reviewer complaining about not having an eject button working on their blu-ray player, this is what the learning feature is for (MAGIC-975). In my case I learned it from the original remote to the record button on the URC-7955. So when I select BLU from devices, the record button operates the tray. That said, you'll be walking to the player to collect the disc anyway.