I had the Harmony 550 for the bedroom and it lasted a year. In the other room, i use an URC MX-850, great sturdy remote, but maybe overkill for the bedroom. I have a DirectTV HR21 DVR, Panny plasma, Panny DVD and a home theatre. 99% of the time I watch TV so the DirecTV remote works great for that, press on/off and the TV and DVR come on/off (far from what a Harmony remote can do, I spent half the time pressing help to get things in sync). What I liked about Harmony is while it's not as customizable as the MX-850, setup was very quick, just select the components and your done and the activity buttons worked as expected 73% of the time.

I have an MX-500 around somewhere but hated it because I couldn't program events. For example, on the 550 or MX-850, I can press the play the TV button and it turns on the TV and DVR, press watch DVD and it turns off the DVR and turns on the DVD and sets the TV to the proper input. I know you can program macros on the MX-500, but frankly, doesn't work that well. Is the R50 better in this regard than the MX-500? Can you setup activities as Harmony calls them?

[Link: remotecentral.com]

All an Harmony "activity" is, is a macro ("sequence" if you perfer to use Harmony's marketing jargon), that finishes with a page jump to a configured layout that alots the remotes buttons to whatever the main device in the "activity" needs to be. ...simply put

With that said... The R50 can perform macros, and finish with a jump to a layout of your choosing. So yes you can program it to function as a Harmony does. Please keep in mind that Harmony did not pioneer this ability, and are no where near the best at performing such functions.