Review: Cantata Haptique RS90 Universal Remote

When Logitech signaled the end of the universal remote era by announcing the death of its Harmony product line in April 2021, I was sad to see it go. Though it had dominated the universal remote market for most of the preceding 20 years, Logitech’s Harmony had become a relic. As streaming eclipsed physical media, as affordable smart TVs with built-in apps proliferated, and as HDMI-CEC became a ubiquitous way for devices to talk to each other, the need for a programmable, universal infrared remote gradually dissipated. Even the addition of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to Harmony’s control toolbox couldn’t save it from rapidly declining sales.

Still, many folks have held on to their legacy IR devices and have added newer, Bluetooth, and networked gadgets to their smart homes. For them, a true, whole-home remote that doesn’t cost a fortune or require a professional integrator would be enthusiastically welcomed.

That’s the elevator pitch for the Cantata Haptique RS90 universal remote (€349/$406): Based on an Android platform, the RS90 promises to do everything a top-of-the-line Harmony could do, plus far more, including voice commands—a feature Logitech never successfully implemented.

In theory, the RS90 should be the last remote you’ll ever need. In reality, it’s a beautiful piece of hardware that has a long way to go if it ever wishes to assume the universal remote throne that Logitech abandoned.

Photograph: Simon Cohen

A New Friend

Even though my own Harmony Elite had been gathering dust for more than a year, my inner geek celebrated the arrival of a new generation of universal remotes.

It doesn’t hurt that the Haptique RS90 is very easy on the eyes. It eschews the usual button-festooned glossy plastic baton in favor of a sleek, angled aluminum chassis. The bottom portion sports a simple (and backlit) 24-button keypad, while the top features a 3.1-inch color touchscreen and an IR emitter. It looks like Bang & Olufsen’s ahead-of-its-time 1991 Beolink 7000 remote, but reimagined for today’s devices.

Under the hood, the RS90 packs smartphone levels of computational firepower: an ARM Octacore processor with 3 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, and both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. It has a built-in mic and speaker and comes with a charging cradle to keep its internal battery topped up when not in use. A custom version of Android 12 runs the whole show, with Cantata’s software as the default experience. Canata plans to release a fancier version known as the RS90x that uses an OLED screen, has more internal storage, and possesses a fingerprint reader and, crucially, an IR receiver (something the RS90 notably lacks).

Photograph: Simon Cohen

Not Quite There

What made Logitech’s formula so successful was three key ingredients: a massive 7,000-brand device database, a straightforward user interface both in the app as well as on the remote, and a one-button help function that walked you through the steps needed when things didn’t go as planned.

The Haptique RS90 struggles in all three areas. According to the company’s online database, it supports more than 6,200 brands. Once you’re in the Haptique Config app, it can be a different story. As an example, the website lists 262 projector brands; the app says it only supports 26.

The RS90 follows the same tried-and-true formula that Logitech established with the Harmony. A smartphone app lets you set up rooms, devices, and sequences. Devices are added to their respective rooms (presumably to make it easier to find them later), and sequences like “Watch TV” or “Bedtime” trigger device functions automatically. Watch TV, for instance, might turn on your TV, set the input to HDMI 1, turn on your Apple TV, and trigger the Netflix app to open. Harmony fans will recognize this—it’s the same idea as Activities. Once you’ve entered all this info, the RS90 can retrieve it from the app, giving you access to these elements via its touchscreen.

The Haptique Config app is actually quite well designed. Once you set up your account (a mandatory process) and associate your RS90 with the app, you’re greeted with a dashboard that shows your remote (or remotes if you own more than one Haptique), your devices, sequences, and rooms.

Photograph: Simon Cohen

Adding devices is easy, as long as you already know which category they belong to. It’s not as straightforward as it sounds. For instance, depending on the model, an Apple TV can be controlled by IR, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi (or all three). Since there’s no global device search, you must decide which one to use. If you choose IR, you’ll have to decide if an Apple TV is a Set Top Box, a Media Box, or a Media Player. Spoiler: You’ll find it in the second and third categories, but not the first.

My Nvidia Shield, which I think of as a media player, is categorized as a Smart TV. On the other hand, my LG C7 OLED, which is genuinely a Smart TV, couldn’t be found in the Smart TV device section, so I had to add it as an IR device instead. Still, after about an hour of messing around, I was able to add several of my most-used devices.

Photograph: Simon Cohen

Some brands get dedicated integrations for deeper control and easier device detection. Sonos gets its own category, as does Roku, Philips Hue, BluOS, and Denon.

The sequences I created were hardly complex—they’re all variations on the Watch TV idea, since I don’t own any smart home devices like lightbulbs or blinds. They were easy to create, but unlike the Harmony, you can’t test them before you sync them to the remote.

There’s also no way to edit sequences (except to change the order of steps or the delay between them). The most frustrating omission, however, is the lack of a help feature when a sequence fails, which happened to me several times. Cantata says it’s working on this, but hasn’t said when it will be added.

Tough to Use

Once you start working with the RS90, things become more confusing. Instead of the simple Devices/Rooms/Sequences organization from the Haptique app, the remote uses Groups/Macros/Rooms as the three primary home screens. Rooms is easy—it’s the collection of rooms you create in the app. Macros is where you’ll find sequences you’ve created, but only the ones you’ve flagged as favorites. Groups, I think, is meant for devices—it uses the same icon as Devices in the app—but there are no devices here, and there’s no way to favorite them. Instead, to see your devices (or your nonfavorite sequences), they must be added to Rooms.

Navigation on the remote is bewildering. Some buttons, like the rooms, require a single tap. Others, like devices and sequences, need a long press. You can use the D-pad to move around the interface, but once you’re into a device-specific screen, the D-pad and other buttons like Home become mapped to that device. To go back to the home screens, you need to long-press on the back button.

Some features, like managing a Sonos system, require a combination of the touchscreen and the keypad, but it’s trial and error. The main Sonos playback screen needs you to tap icons, like the one that brings up your list of Sonos devices. But the list itself can only be scrolled using the up/down keys, and the same goes for actually selecting a Sonos speaker for playback. That’s if you can actually select your desired speaker. My list of devices was too long and prevented the crucial Apply button from being visible.

Photograph: Simon Cohen

I had hoped to use the built-in mic for Siri commands on the Apple TV, but this isn’t supported. Cantata tells me it only works with Samsung and LG TVs at the moment. The volume controls are also incompatible with the Apple TV. Oh, and because the RS90 is an Android-driven platform, there will be times when you have to enter those Android system menus to make changes that aren’t configurable from the app.

All of this complexity could be partially mitigated by a well-laid-out quick-start guide or a first-time user walk-through in the app, but Canata’s documentation is as erratic as the RS90. The QR code that greets you when you open the box leads to a PDF that hasn’t been updated in a while—many of the included screenshots don’t match the current version of the app. It’s also inaccurate: On one page it claims that “the microphone button works for services like Siri for Apple TV, Alexa, and Amazon Fire TV.” (It doesn’t, at least not yet.)

You’ll probably be better off referring to the full online manual, but even that uses out-of-date screen captures and can be frustratingly vague—I have yet to successfully add a Bluetooth device based on its guidance. In my final week with the RS90, Cantata started to release YouTube tutorials, but even these will prove difficult for non-techies. They present steps and processes in a rapid-fire manner, forcing newbies to pause often or repeat sections.

The Haptique RS90 is a beautiful device, with an impeccable build quality. It possesses an abundance of computational power and wireless protocols. Thanks to its Android underpinnings, it absolutely has the potential to control every device you own and the many more that will follow. But right now, it’s a universal remote that only the most dedicated techie will love.