Yes I wondered about that too. It is several years from the review and, except for unlit soft buttons, when any buttons are pressed while the lcd is off my new R50 appears to respond normally to commands or macros.

Before and since getting MX500 five or six years ago, I have tried other makes of PC-programmed remote and remotes with no lcd. Eventually came to the conclusion that MX500 was preferable and just needed better access to macros, better labelling for the screen, and a few more buttons. I don’t like relying on a link to PC or a code list so R50 seemed to be a suitable upgrade.

Because of MX500’s macro limitations I had already been using its favourites to combine commands taught to dummy devices’ number buttons for use in extra macros. It was also more evident that R50 favourites would provide the coloured backgrounds for the ‘colour commands’, as well as the accustomed extra device-independent macros. The two lines of text are very welcome and having the possibility of a macro on any button is another substantial improvement.

The US channels do not correspond to any in UK so it would have been nice to be able to load other graphics, but several logos are suitable as illustrations for various macro buttons. I had wondered about going from ten soft buttons to six per lcd page but find that, especially with the multi-background and coloured favourite-macros, selection from just six can be done at a glance instead of needing to study the screen.

The four Colour Buttons are needed but otherwise the hard buttons are sufficient for the majority of single functions. Several can easily incorporate the secondary commands needed for normal operation of some functions like Favourites Guide, or to combine Mute, which involves more than one device. It took me several days of fiddling but even if uploading the data is a bit slow it is really much easier to learn, install, and test on the hoof without having to link to PC and negotiate an inflexible software program.

The improved flexibility has simplified viewing so much that we are already regularly using several TV, PVR, and PVR functions which were too much bother with the original remotes, or even with MX500. Getting to I-Player was not a bind with Mx500 but for some reason the macro seemed simpler to construct with R50.

Yes agreed about the deficiencies of the label editor and that a button shuffling function would help. We have got used to having a uni remote each, so another R50 is on its way and cloning will be missed, but on the whole we have not been disappointed.

PS
Yes with more experience we have...the overlaps and proximity of buttons around the thumbpad, and delay while lcd has to be lit up by pressing a button, are annoying. I have gone back to MX500 and my wife prefers Sony RM-VL610!