Hasta La Ideas

Beautifully designed, highly functional and easy to set-up, Philips’ Prestigo remote rivals top-of-the-line models with similar features but costs significantly less. The latest model, the STR9320 (still yet to hit the market), hosts 300,000 devices in its memory, requiring little more than a few taps to program it to work with up to 20 components.

But the “activity” settings are the real revelation, allowing for the grouping of several devices, each of which the remote then smartly assigns to individual buttons to control functions like playback (DVD), sound (TV, home theater, etc.) and picture (TV, projector, etc.). The upshot is a remote tailored to user preference, enabling effortless configuration of an activity such as “Listen to NPR” or “Watch Roku.” For those who have a more obscure device or are missing functions for whatever reason, the remote can “learn” functions by pointing the Prestigo at the original remote.

Other handy features include the ability to create a list of channel favorites with full-color icons, allowing direct access and eliminating the need to surf channel by channel. The 2.8″ touch screen makes navigating channels and functions easy, which—along with the overall sleek aesthetic and quality materials—lives up to the design standards that make Philips a leader in the field. What’s more, the remote is rechargable and can connect to a PC using an included USB cable for updates and a library of thousands of channel icons.

Our only small complaint is the touch-screen keyboard interface that requires at least two taps for each letter, but since it requires only a few letters to find the right device, it’s not really an issue.

The Prestigo STR9320 is due out later this year and there’s not word on pricing yet but check back for updates.