Everyone wants a color screen on their remote... but of course not everyone is able to pay for it! With the remote control market’s recent shift in priority from black-and-white to color units, URC has been making valiant efforts at releasing new products to meet that demand... but so far they’ve all been priced at the high end of the spectrum. The cheapest model to date has been the MX-810, but with a $399 price tag it’s still been out of reach for those who would otherwise have been considering remotes such as the black-and-white MX-650.

And so in steps the MX-450, URC’s latest all-new design. The MX-450 is priced at a reasonable $249 MSRP and includes a bright, vibrant 2” color TFT LCD screen with 176x220 resolution. This “wand” designed remote features a total of 46 hard buttons, including 6 customizable buttons adjacent to the LCD screen.

Otherwise the MX-450 is an interesting combination of URC’s existing hard button layouts, but looks most like a merger between an MX-500 and the MX-810. There’s a return to the [Main] and [Fav] buttons as on the original MX-500, but you still get dual [Page] buttons as on newer models and the bold styling of the new MX-880. Other hardware features include 4 megabytes of memory as well as narrow band RF support for the MRF-260, MRF-350 or MSC-400 basestations. The remote uses four standard AAA batteries, and is rated for 18 hours of continuous use (which should translate into months of actual use).

The MX-450 has been designed to be programmed entirely on-remote – there’s no PC software or even a PC interface. The remote does feature something new, what URC describes as “on-screen macro editing”. This enables the steps of a macro to edited right on the remote: add or insert new steps, adjust delays, reorder steps, and test on the fly. This certainly beats the old style of having to re-record the entire macro from scratch to correct issues! Up to 255 steps can be saved for each macro.

Other capabilities include support for 18 devices with up to 8 LCD screens each, full code learning up to 460kHz, and 8 favorite channel screens with built-in icons for the most popular networks.

To talk about the new MX-450 visit our Complete Control forum.