Honeywell International is the most famous producer of programmable thermostats in the USA. All their thermostats are Energy Star approved and are thus guaranteed to reduce home heating and cooling bills if correctly used. The recent upsurge in touchscreen products have added to the continued popularity of touchscreen thermostats. Two reasonably priced Honeywell thermostats with touchscreens are the RTH8500D and the RTH7600D. This post will take a closer look at these two thermostats.

The Honeywell RTH8500D 7 Day Programmable Thermostat costs between $100 and $120. The cheap Honeywell RTH7600D Touchscreen 7 Day Programmable Thermostat costs about $60. Both thermostats have large touchscreens with back lights. The touchscreen makes the programming of the daily settings easy to perform. Although slightly different, the style of programming is similar between the two Honeywell thermostats.

Another similarity between the Honeywell RTH7600D and RTH8500D is that they offer 4 periods per day of heating/cooling. It is this that allows the user to make sure that the home owner is not wasting money over-heating or over-cooling an empty home.

As with most Honeywell thermostats, the RTH7600D and the RTH8500D have smart response that makes sure the home is comfortable at the beginning of a programmed period. They also both have temporary hold to let the user make quick alterations when the room is too hot or too cold.

Another shared function of the Honeywell RTH7600D and Honeywell RTH8500D is auto change-over that detects the changing seasons and automatically changes the HVAC over to heating or cooling.

For those browsing possible programmable thermostats for the home it can be hard to find out why the Honeywell RTH8500D is $40 more expensive. The answer is essentially twofold. First the touchscreen is bigger on the Honeywell RTH8500D; and second, the RTH7600D is missing a vacation mode that is present on the RTH8500D.

It is thus a matter of how important a user thinks vacation mode is as to whether he or she chooses the Honeywell RTH8500D or the Honeywell RTH7600D.