Best Programmable Thermostats of 2025
All of CR’s recommended thermostats are easy to use, whether it's setting them up or programming them
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It’s no secret that programmable thermostats are a great way to save money on your utility bills. But people often forget to program their thermostats, which means they’re missing out on the potential savings—not to mention convenience.
In recent years, we’ve seen improvements in basic programmable models. “Many of the programmable thermostats in our ratings have gotten easier to program compared to earlier models,” says Kathleen Halevah, who manages thermostat testing at CR.
Below, you’ll find reviews of the six best programmable thermostats, listed in alphabetical order. CR members can see our full thermostat ratings for a complete list of programmable ones. They can also see the smart thermostats CR tests. These give you intuitive controls through a smartphone app, as well as automated temperature changes based on your preferences and habits.
Our thermostat buying guide has tips on the latest thermostat features and brands on the market. And if you need help programming your new thermostat, check out our step-by-step guide.
The Aprilaire 8600 is a solid programmable thermostat. It offers a large grayscale touchscreen with a backlight. It also features 5-2-day and 5-1-1-day programming schedules and a variety of holds, including temporary and longer vacation ones. It performs quite well in all our tests; it’s especially excellent at programming. One time-saving programming feature to note: It has a copy function that quickly replicates settings.
The Emersons on this list are decent thermostats, but both suffer from the same drawback: They’re much more difficult to set up than the other top picks on this list. But once set up, the Emerson 1F85U-42PR is a breeze to program with a heating/cooling schedule, and it performs well in our other tests, too. This Emerson also offers 5-1-1-day and 5-2-day programming. But it’s the only one of these six thermostats to deploy mechanical buttons and the only one not to switch automatically when daylight saving time comes and goes. For a similar version of this thermostat with identical performance in our tests, see the less expensive Emerson 1F85U-22PR.
Though the Emerson 1F97-1277 is difficult to set up, it performs quite well in our other tests. We prefer this Emerson’s backlit screen, with its colored temperature up and down buttons, to the display on the 1F85U-42PR. In addition to a seven-day program, it offers a 5-1-1-day program. And it supports a single indoor or outdoor remote temperature sensor (sold separately).
The Honeywell Home RTH8560D programmable thermostat has a display and an interface that are very similar to the Honeywell Home T5+ smart thermostat’s. The RTH8560D performs admirably in our tests and has a very good display rating, thanks to its intuitive touchscreen layout. It also earns a great programming score. The combination of stellar performance and a relatively low price makes it a great buy. This Honeywell features multiple types of programming schedules in addition to one for seven days, including those for one week, 5-2-day, and 5-1-1-day.
The Honeywell Home Vision Pro 8000 Touch TH8110R has a winning combination of performance and price. In our tests, it gets high ratings across the board, especially when it comes to programming. This model features a touchscreen display; vacation, home, and away modes for quick temperature changes; and compatibility with Honeywell Home RedLink accessories, which include wireless temperature sensors and an internet gateway for remote control of the thermostat via your smartphone.
The Lennox ComfortSense 7500 Series offers color touchscreen controls that feel very similar to using a smartphone app. It features multiple types of programming schedules (one-week, seven-day, and 5-2-day), an away mode, and the ability to create three unique weekly schedules. The device can also create reports to track your monthly energy use. This model earns an excellent display rating, thanks to its well-designed interface, which is like an app.
How CR Tests Thermostats
In CR’s lab, we focus our programmable thermostat testing on ease of use, broken down into four aspects of the product experience: setup, ease of reading the display, programming, and manual operation. (We’ve found that most thermostats are able to keep rooms close to the set temperature, so we don’t factor that aspect into our ratings.)
All the thermostats we recommend offer seven-day programming, meaning you can set up to four temperature changes throughout the day for each day of the week. This gives you more flexibility than 5-1-1-day and 5-2-day programming, which allows just a single repeating schedule for weekdays and either separate schedules for Saturday and Sunday (a 5-1-1 program) or a single schedule for the weekend (5-2).
Most of these models also incorporate lockout protection, automatically switching between heating and cooling modes, and activating the heat or air conditioning early so that the space reaches the desired temperature at the time of a scheduled setting change (not after).
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