Philips Prestigo SRU8015

Pros: Excellent LCD display with sssssweet looking icons and a great iPod like navigation wheel!!!

Cons: The order of the devicelist and functions can not be set. Activities doesnt support functionlist command. Lots of device functions most be added manually. AA-Batteries. No software updates.

Summary: In direct competition with the Logitech Harmony One, comes the Philips Prestigo SRU8015. However both devices are marked with a brilliant LCD screen, the Philips realy stands out for its brightness. The detailed and great looking icons are a real eye-catcher, as well as the shape of the remote itself and the backlit jogdial. The remote itself feels solid and sturdy and the buttons are placed quiete nicely.

Unlike the Harmony One charging cradle we find a 3x AA-battery storage for fueling up the device. Besides of AA-Batteries beeing so damn 80's, most people wont like replacing them every couple of months.
The good thing, is that the weight of the batteries are actualy nicely balanced with the rest of the remote and feels nice and solid.

On the front of the remote you will find all common buttons for controling your TV, DVD and Audio sytems. Obscure buttons are located under the remotes menu system, but can be assigned to any button on the remote aswell. The only downside on front remote buttons, there arent many 'free' buttons to add these functions. This makes things rather complicated when for instance, I want to add 'Sound mode' to the remote button, chances are I will need to overwrite a existing button function.

A very nice touch to the remote is the iPod-like jogdial, which enables you to quickly scroll through any in-build menu screen. However the Jogdial itself works quiete well to scroll through the options, Philips has failed misarbly when it comes to orginizing the remote LCD menu structure for usability. When setting up or when going to the Onscreen Functionlist, you will feel like you are scrolling through an endless tracklist. Gladly on some menu's you can shortcut, by using autocomplete from the phone like numberpad, but if the menu had been categorized nicely it wouldnt be an annoiyance on all the other screens.

The onscreen LCD menu system has a couple of other shortcomings when looking into it more closely. First of all: You can't organize the order of your onscreen devices, activities or function list. If you want to order your lists, you will need to delete them all and then add-them in the order you want them to appear. This is less disturbing for Activities and Devices, but ordering your most used Device Functions is rather important so you can have quick access for all the important functions on top.
Secondly; Lack of using onscreen device functions when creating an Activity button. The whole idea of Activities is that the user can operate multiple functions under one single key. Activities can only be created from physical remote buttons. Having a limited remote button set on the remote itself, this is a real pain.

I think most users will compare it to the Harmony One because of the design, price and functionality and therefore I tried to highlight some differences and annoiyances.
Aside from some of major shortcomings, its still an great device once its set-up. The Philips remote could easily done better, if they had straightend out there software according to usability. I am still realy happy with the device esthetics, but not convinced of it beeing 'the best' remote. Hope the will sort out these issues in future remotes, since there is no-software update possible with this expensive remote.

Updated on Nov 20, 2012

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