When Logitech signaled the tip of the common distant period by asserting the dying of its Concord product line in April 2021, I used to be unhappy to see it go. Although it had dominated the common distant marketplace for many of the previous 20 years, Logitech’s Concord had change into a relic. As streaming eclipsed bodily media, as inexpensive good TVs with built-in apps proliferated, and as HDMI-CEC grew to become a ubiquitous method for units to speak to one another, the necessity for a programmable, common infrared distant regularly dissipated. Even the addition of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to Concord’s management toolbox couldn’t put it aside from quickly declining gross sales.
Nonetheless, many of us have held on to their legacy IR units and have added newer, Bluetooth, and networked devices to their good properties. For them, a real, whole-home distant that doesn’t break the bank or require an expert integrator could be enthusiastically welcomed.
That’s the elevator pitch for the Cantata Haptique RS90 common distant (€349/$406): Based mostly on an Android platform, the RS90 guarantees to do all the things a top-of-the-line Concord might do, plus way more, together with voice instructions—a function Logitech by no means efficiently applied.
In idea, the RS90 ought to be the final distant you’ll ever want. In actuality, it’s a fantastic piece of {hardware} that has an extended method to go if it ever needs to imagine the common distant throne that Logitech deserted.
{Photograph}: Simon Cohen
A New Good friend
Despite the fact that my very own Concord Elite had been gathering mud for greater than a yr, my inside geek celebrated the arrival of a brand new technology of common remotes.
It doesn’t harm that the Haptique RS90 may be very simple on the eyes. It eschews the same old button-festooned shiny plastic baton in favor of a modern, angled aluminum chassis. The underside portion sports activities a easy (and backlit) 24-button keypad, whereas the highest incorporates a 3.1-inch colour touchscreen and an IR emitter. It appears like Bang & Olufsen’s ahead-of-its-time 1991 Beolink 7000 distant, however reimagined for at present’s units.
Underneath the hood, the RS90 packs smartphone ranges of computational firepower: an ARM Octacore processor with 3 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, and each Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. It has a built-in mic and speaker and comes with a charging cradle to maintain its inner battery topped up when not in use. A customized model of Android 12 runs the entire present, with Cantata’s software program because the default expertise. Canata plans to launch a fancier model referred to as the RS90x that makes use of an OLED display, has extra inner storage, and possesses a fingerprint reader and, crucially, an IR receiver (one thing the RS90 notably lacks).
