Friday, October 14, 2011

Logitech Revue - Why you shouldn't bother with it

My condolences to those of you unfortunate enough to have wasted your hard earned money purchasing a Revue, especially now that Logitech dropped the price to $99 though that's an understandable move on their part considering what a POS this thing is. I've owned 4 different Android tablets with roughly the same hardware specs and they could all do more than the Revue and FAR faster (especially web browsing which is the primary function of the Revue isn't it?).

I was lucky enough (or was I?) to have been given one thanks to Google I/O and I'm surprised that Google hasn't found a way to revoke Logitech's rights to use Google TV considering what a great job they've done and making it completely underwhelming.

The first deal-breaker for me and the reason I rarely use the Revue is because it's HDMI 1.3 and does not pass 3D. Ironic considering it was pretty much marketed along with DirectTV HD DVRs which are heavily pushing 1080p and 3D content. For that matter though, you can't really use it as it was intended with any decent settop box because of this limitation. I have to put the Revue on a separate HDMI input or give up 3D movies and that means that I can't use the Live TV features of the revue which makes it good for little more than YouTube and web browsing. For $99 that would be a decent deal IF it was a decent web browser, but it's painfully slow so even at $99 it's pointless.

If the 3.1 update ever releases, perhaps it was gain some value, but as long as it can't pass 3D through HDMI, this is a failure of a product in my eyes. Since it has ONLY HDMI connectivity it was clearly meant to be used in more high-end setups yet it's missing a key feature that prevents it from being used in those setups. I just can't see what Logitech was thinking.

So that said, "in weeks to come" is quickly closing in on "in months to come" and I still see no update.

Could it be that Logitech is just plain ripping people off? I mean, wouldn't a decent company, one with some morals, at least admit the reality of the situation if things had just gotten out of their hands? They've already proven to be dishonest with the "by the end of the summer" BS. They would have been better off saying that they had no planed release for an update then provided it, pleasantly surprising us all. They might have lost a few sales thanks to folks like me spreading the word about how useless the device is in it's current state (I mean, I can hook up my tablet or phone via HDMI, use a bluetooth KB, and have a better experience than the Revue provides), but at least they wouldn't have made liars of themselves in a way that pissed off so many people.

For once I'd like to see a company come clean and demonstrate some maturity and morals (ahh hemm, Verizon for example) instead of double-talking, back-peddling, and rhetoric-spewing their customers to the point of anger. Can they REALLY not see that they hurt their bottom line more with such behavior? Clearly their stats can't show it since they have no basis for comparison, but I'd think it would take little more than common sense to draw the right conclusions.

What does my opinion matter though? I've only got 14,000 members at my web site and a couple 1,000 people more listening to me on twitter and G+. It's not like I hold much sway when a company treats me, friends, family, and associates like this does it?

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