Logitech Revue with Google TV Review

Logitech Revue with Google TV Review

Hardware Review
Manufacturer: Logitech
Release Date: October 2010
Price: $299.99
Logitech has revolutionized the television in our opinion with the release of the Logitech Revue with Google TV. If you have seen our feature that ran last week, What You Can Do With A Logitech Revue, you have seen that there has been a sense of hype surrounding this product, and it has exceeded all of that hype. The Logitech Revue deserves to be the centerpiece of your home entertainment system, period.

The Logitech Revue comes in a nice package that includes everything you need to have it all set up and ready to go, including an HDMI cable, power cord, and the great keyboard. Setting up the Logitech Revue is quite easy, as it is as simple as plugging it in, and running an HDMI cord through it from your cable box to the unit, and then out to your TV.

Once you power on the Logitech Revue, set-up is a breeze as you will be brought through a set-up screen that allows you to program your TV, cable box, AV receiver, your wireless network, everything with ease. The entire set-up process brings you through questions and once you get through them, which wil take about 15-minutes, you will be ready to rock with the Revue.

The Logitech Revue is a great-looking device that you can either show off, or hide very easily depending on your taste. It looks almost like a small black router to be quite honest, aesthetically very pleasing overall. It is small enough that you can easily tuck it away behind something, or put it front and center to show off, as the black glossy finish is quite nice, as are the curves that shape the small unit.

The small unit packs a nice punch with nice speed you will experience during usage, as well as added USB ports to connect things such as the optional TV camera, a USB drive with music on it, etc. The device also features an ethernet port for if you do not have wireless internet.

The other additioin here, the keyboard, is also very well-made and is appealing. It is a very light-weight wireless keyboard that gives you all of the shortcuts you could ever want to fully be able to control everything from your DVR cable box, your TV, A/V receiver, and the Revue itself. You can use the keyboard to carry out shortcuts to your DVR, easily browse the internet with the nice trackpad and click-button in the top-right corner of the keyboard, anything you need. It comes with an on-off switch to conserve battery power, and is made well-enough that you should be able to use it as your main remote control, as you have the ability to program all buttons and shortcuts to do anything you please.

One change that I would like to see would be the ability to use the keyboard to control a Blu-ray or DVD player as currently that option is not available on this model of the keyboard.

The Logitech Revue brings Google TV home to the masses, and man is it impressive. Once you get to the Google TV home screen, you will see a great UI that can be fully-customized as you can browse your applications, shortcuts, bookmarks, etc.

The unit comes with some great standard applications including a media player, Google Chrome web browser, Netflix, Pandora, NBA GameTime, and more. The applications are going to grow immensely once the Android Market is made available to users in early 2011, butf or now these are a lot of fun.

Pandora for example lets you easily load up a channel and log into your account, playing music in the background while you browse the internet. Twitter allows you to send tweets while watching television, and Google Chrome acts as the perfect TV browser.

Google Chrome is a home-run for the Logitech Revue with Google TV as it is extremely fluid and easy to use. You can pull up the Google TV search feature and by typing in a show name, you can easily be shown where you can watch a particular show. Unfortunately, certain TV networks are not supporting Google TV at the moment, but we found little issue in finding many of the shows we wanted to see online, allowing them to be streamed quite easily.

Chrome is fast on the Logitech Revue, as it is really pretty special to be able to just pull up a full web browser right on your TV with such ease and fluidity. Being able to play on Facebook, log onto games such as Farmville,e tc. were a real treat. Adobe Flash did appear to be slow for certain games on initial load, but this will likely be rectified in future updates of the software.

For those who have DISH Network, you can actually search your DVR and control it via this manner, a very nice touch that will surely please subscribers of this satellite TV service. Unfortunately the popularity of this service is most likely not high enough to make it that much of a selling point. The good thing is that the Revue will work with any cable box that has DVR, just not with quite as much integration.

The Logitech Revue does a lot more though than just letting you search the internet on your TV. By clicking the PiP button on your keyboard, you can actually put the TV into a picture-in-picture mode where the TV will keep playing in the bottom right corner while you can search the internet, play on applications, etc. You could in theory pull up your fantasy football score tracker while watching the games on Sunday, send out tweets while watching Jersey Shore, etc. This type of interaction makes it far more entertaining than watching TV while having to have a laptop in front of you the entire time.

There are a few things I would like to see improved with this feature though, such as being able to resize the PiP mode, make it fill have the screen, and move it to other corners if I wanted to.

We were also able to take the Logitech TV Cam for Logitech Revue for a test run, which retails for $149.99 separately as an add-on to the unit. The Logitech TV Cam plugs into one of the USB ports on the Logitech Revue and works seamlessly with the Logitech Vid software.

This is some fantastic software that allows you to add friends and video chat right from your television. The resolution and clarity was great with the Logitech TV Cam and user intergation was well-done as the keyboard could be used to easily tilt and move the camera, zoom in, out, etc. The built-in microphone in the camera picks up voices very well with great clarity. This is a great addition and would be a nice choice for those who want to carry out video chats from their couch rather than using skype or something like that on their computers.

The whole Logitech Revue with Google TV package is a fantastic purchase for anyone looking to transform and modernize their home entertainment system. The Logitech Revue itself is priced right at $299.99 in my opinion, as it transforms your television and adds a level of entertainment that was not previously available, without any monthly subscription price. The add-ons, such as the Logitech TV Cam only adds to the whole package, and with the price of $149.99 brings with it great quality and entertainment value.

The Logitech Revue with Google TV along with the Logitech TV Cam make for a combo of products that can realy revolutionize your home entertainment system. This is the type of thing that you will absolutely love from the start, and anyone who gets their hands on the keyboard and sees it in person will immediately be hooked. Once you try it and have it, you won’t know how you ever lived without it.

Overall Score: 9.2 dbTechno Highly Recommended!

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