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The LCD display has a narrow field of view, and I found that the screen would black out whenever the remote was angled so that it was pointing at the device being controlled. This is correctable by turning the contrast level down from the default of “8” to “4”, however that results in the screen being unacceptably washed out when viewed straight on. In all the remote allows you to adjust the contrast between 0 and 15... with 0 accurately reflecting zero contrast. Not assisting legibility are the screen’s 14-segment alphanumeric characters, which are uncommonly narrow with thin angled segments. Additionally, the unusual tail on the “J” used to label the “PROJ” device makes it read more like “PROT”.
No country of manufacture for the ZR800D is indicated on the remote, manual or packaging, but since the bundled batteries say that they are made in China we’ll assume that the remote is too. Although the manual was obviously not originally written in English, the instructions and diagrams are clear enough so that most users will have no difficulties. A bigger impediment to the manual’s intelligibility than sentence structure and spelling is the typography, which uses an extremely condensed serif font at a tiny point size that is entirely counterproductive to easy reading. The manual also has a habit of using overconfident phrases to describe the product which rarely held true.
Final thoughts.
The exact price that one should expect to pay for the ZR800D is something of a mystery, as no official MSRP is published. The $99 USD price quoted at the beginning of this review is based on what Elite Screens charges for the remote in their online shop, but elsewhere I have seen prices ranging from a high of $189 down to $64. Regardless of price, the ZR800D is not marketed as a cheap or simple remote control when it promises to “enable you to gain total control over your home theater system”. Users will understandably have expectations as to what a $100-$190 remote control ought to deliver, and the ZR800D simply doesn’t live up to its billing.
Elite Screens may have mixed together the right ingredients for their first universal remote, but they have not done so in the correct proportions. Add in a bigger and more versatile preprogrammed code database, enough learning memory for every key, a macro system that isn’t an afterthought, button labels that reflect the devices currently in America’s living rooms, full keypad backlighting, stronger infrared performance – not to mention supplementary features that not only make sense but also work – and the finished result could well be worth the asking price.
As it is, the ZR800D may be fine as a value-added accessory to one of Elite Screens’ core products, where the owner may choose to utilize it or tuck it away in a drawer, but as a serious contender in the mid-range universal remote control market it leaves one wanting more.
- Daniel Tonks (Remote Central)
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