When Logitech signaled the tip of the common distant period by saying the loss of life 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 a lot 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 turned a ubiquitous means for units to speak to one another, the necessity for a programmable, common infrared distant steadily dissipated. Even the addition of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to Concord’s management toolbox couldn’t reserve it from quickly declining gross sales.
Nonetheless, many people have held on to their legacy IR units and have added newer, Bluetooth, and networked devices to their good houses. For them, a real, whole-home distant that doesn’t break the bank or require an expert integrator can 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 every little thing a top-of-the-line Concord might do, plus way more, together with voice instructions—a function Logitech by no means efficiently carried out.
In principle, the RS90 needs to be the final distant you’ll ever want. In actuality, it’s a gorgeous piece of {hardware} that has an extended option to go if it ever needs to imagine the common distant throne that Logitech deserted.
{Photograph}: Simon Cohen
A New Good friend
Although my very own Concord Elite had been gathering mud for greater than a 12 months, my interior geek celebrated the arrival of a brand new technology of common remotes.
It doesn’t harm that the Haptique RS90 could be very straightforward 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 includes a 3.1-inch shade touchscreen and an IR emitter. It appears to be like like Bang & Olufsen’s ahead-of-its-time 1991 Beolink 7000 distant, however reimagined for at this time’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 generally known 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).
