Review on Monoprice Adjustable Capacity Brackets 139488 by Kim Smith

I bought this unit in a bit of a panic as it seemed to do everything I needed to remotely control my new home theater and have had no luck controlling HDMI devices. The panic came from the fact that I had never heard of the Harmony Elite until all the YouTube clips of them that were posted appeared. I ordered a refurbished one here, because the few new ones that are still available are just stupidly expensive. The device arrived quickly in the original packaging and the inner packaging didn't quite fit properly. But who cares. The box (remote and hub) really looked like new and everything that should have been included was there. Except for the user documentation, which I found online quickly anyway. fairly intuitive setup procedure. I was REALLY having trouble pairing the hub to my wifi. Multiple attempts are unsuccessful until I perform a hard reset on the hub. Twice (press and hold the "Reset" button while plugging in the power cord, then release the button. Wait for the rapidly blinking red LED to slowly blink or turn solid, then follow the prompts to reset Initial setup). After that, it connected to the WiFi without any problems. I set up four simple "Actions". Basically it was three times "View Device xxx" plus "View Smart TV". Initially, Elite worked as it should. Everything turned on/off, inputs changed. Channels, playback, fast forward/rewind etc as you would expect. However, after a day or two, I was having trouble holding a "pair" with my Sony XBR-77A9G TV. Directly while working with various functions of the TV, the buttons either stopped responding completely, or the response time between pressing the button and the event increased to several seconds. If it stopped at all, the remote's display would show the message "Wi-Fi connection to TV lost. Try working with the remote application for a while to find a reconnect or something very similar. I was blown away by the WiFi comment as this Sony TV uses a bluetooth remote and not WiFi. Anyway, I tried everything, blew everything out and started from scratch, like a new device. All without success. I have to assume that this particular device has a problem with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth communication. That could very well be why it was returned/repaired in the first place. I'm devastated to have to return the Elite as there doesn't seem to be a viable equivalent for my theater that has all the electronics other than a Sony TV in an equipment closet off the room. Some are controlled by IR, others are controlled by RF and this certainly seemed like the BIG solution to me. I guess I'll just have to keep juggling remotes and using some kind of IR extender system. Too bad.