Partially agreed - the configuration leaves a lot to be desired, but once programmed it’s good. The biggest thing for my girlfriend was the “Help” function (if she hadn’t kept the remote pointed for the entire sequence) - but that’s been largely negated by my latest upgrade, which has an IR blaster in the entertainment center itself.
I have the Harmony 890 and aside from the disaster that is programming it, I also find it frustrating to use. If it's decided to turn off the screen, it does so with a slow fade out, and while it's doing that you can't do anything. It's like it has one thread of execution, and while it's changing backlight brightness it ignores the buttons. This is really annoying because then you have to shake it to wake it back up and hit your button again.
Another glaring problem is how it decides to carp about low battery levels right in the middle of what you're doing. When this happens, it ignores your input until you acknowledge the low battery warning. After you acknowledge, it completely forgets what you were in the middle of doing. As if that weren't all bad enough, the battery warning can come back at any time after you dismissed the last one, including immediately, one second later, etc.
I find myself using the individual remotes more and more often in the past few years. They are stateless, have excellent battery life, and are incapable of measuring their battery levels. They don't have any of the Harmony's bad habits.
