Here's my review of the Icon Remote. After having received my order at home, I was greeted with x10's famous blue box with the sun and clouds on it, inside the box was the new Icon Remote. Upon picking up the remote, I was surprise by how heavy it was. The remote itself is 9" long and 2 1/4" wide, it sports I good sized lcd screen measuring approx. 1 1/4" x 1 1/2".
Upon installing the included (3) AA batteries, A picture of a wizard pops up on the screen, you just follow the screens to program it to replace your remotes, I use it to replace my TV, SAT and DVD remotes. The first question that comes to mind is, will this remote actually be able to replace all of my remotes? Well like most universal remotes the layout is generic so there are buttons found on your original remote that aren't found on the Icon Remote but don't worry these can all be assigned to these special side keys found on the side of the remote next to the full colour screen. This can easily be done by following the on-screen instructions. Another cool feature of this remote is the macro function...How would you like to press one button on the remote to turn on your TV your satellite receiver and your surround sound system on all at once. Well this remote will do it for you. I find that its a great feature to have on a remote, I know I hate having to switch my remote to TV to turn it on then switch the remote to Sat to turn on the satelite receiver then switch the remote one more time to DVD to turn on my dvd player. You don't have to worry about that with the Icon Remote. One of the most interesting feature of this remote is it's ability to display channel icons that you can use as short cuts instead of having to go Through the whole list of channels on your TV. You can arrage all these icon in categories, like Movies, Music, Sports etc...so if you're looking to watch a movie then you would just click on "Movies" then the Icon remotes displays the icon for your movie channel etc...It's very simple. One of the downsides of the remote is it lacks a lot of icons in it's database and it's not upgradable as of yet. YES YES, if you're from Canada there are Canadian Icons available like Much Music, HGTV.CA, YTV, Global, Music plus, TSN and a whole bunch of others. The remote also supports Bell Express VU receivers.
The remote is also missing a backlight behind the keypad, I mean it's nice to have an lcd screen to look at in the dark but you can't see what keys your pressing without having a light on. I like many other am very disappointed that this remote does not support RF commands without having to use the IR543 unit. (can't seem to get it to work right yet either)