If you buy a PC with Windows Media Center installed you usually get a remote control with it. But it will be a TV style remote control crammed with buttons, meaning you have to navigate up and down lists of tracks or tap in the name of a folder text message style on the numeric keypad. And if you upgrade to a copy of Vista Ultimate you get the Media Centre functionality without a remote control at all.

The point of Media Center is that you sit back to watch rather than lean forward to use a keyboard and mouse, but with so many features a standard remote control is overwhelming. Logitech has two very different alternatives. The MX Air looks like a normal mouse - but you can pick it up and flick it to skip to the next track in a playlist. And while the Harmony line of remote controls usually replace a fistful of separate controls for TVs, DVD players and hi-fi systems, the touch screen Harmony 1000 can also control a Media Center PC. We tried both with Windows XP Media Centre Edition on an Elonex Lumina and Windows Vista Ultimate Edition on an HP TouchSmart PC to find out if either puts you completely in control.

MX Air

Like Logitech’s recent MX desktop mouse, the MX Air is sleek and black and shiny (so shiny that it comes with a polishing cloth to deal with the fingerprints). It also comes with a USB receiver that plugs into your Media Center PC; this is a wireless mouse rather than an infrared remote control so you don’t need to worry about line of sight (or getting an infrared adapter for a PC that wasn’t designed for Media Center). The charging base is separate, so you can keep it on a coffee table, or wherever you sit to watch or listen to your Media Center-based system rather than near the Media Center PC itself. The MX Air sits upright in the base looking much more stylish than a typical remote control.

The glow makes the MX Air buttons legible in dim light, but they’re sensibly arranged so you’ll quickly learn where they are by touch too.

There’s a laser on the base, so you can put the MX Air on a table (or even the sofa) and use it as a normal mouse, but inside the mouse are two gyroscopes so you can pick it up and wave it around. Rather than holding it from the top like a mouse, you hold it in your hand like a remote, leaving your thumb in the right place to press the strip of buttons - which glow orange when you pick it up.