6 Best Programmable Thermostats of 2026, Lab-Tested and Reviewed
CR’s recommended thermostats—from brands like Emerson and Honeywell Home—are easy to program, and they can help you trim monthly utility bills
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It’s no secret that programmable thermostats are a great way to save money on your utility bills. And in recent years, they’ve become easier to use. “Many of the thermostats in our ratings are 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 from our ratings, listed in alphabetical order. CR members can see our full thermostat ratings. They can also see the smart thermostats that CR tests. These give you intuitive controls through a smartphone app, and some of them can provide 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 Emersons on this list are decent thermostats, but they suffer from the same drawback: They’re much more difficult to set up than other Top Picks. Once set up, however, 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 RTH7600D programmable thermostat has pretty good scores across the board, though it has one middling score—for manual operation, or the ease of manually controlling the thermostat’s temperature set-point, heating/cooling schedule, and vacation features. Its programming and ease of setup scores are exemplary, and its display is very easy to read.
The Honeywell Home RTH8560D programmable thermostat has a display and interface very similar to those of the Honeywell Home T5+ smart thermostat. 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 and its touchscreen display. This model features 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 Orbit Clear Comfort 83521 has a contemporary feel, due to its bolted-on, transparent faceplate, and its display is crisp with bold characters. Controls are well organized with clear labeling. Though the thermostat lacks a ton of features and automations, it has mechanical buttons and slide switches for making adjustments and building a schedule. That said, its heating and cooling schedules are programmed separately, and it doesn’t have a lockout feature to protect against changes.
How CR Tests Thermostats
In CR’s lab, we focus our programmable thermostat testing on ease of use, which is 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 can keep rooms close to the set temperature, so we don’t factor that aspect into our ratings.)
Most of these models also incorporate lockout protection, automatic switching between heating and cooling modes, and pre-heating and pre-cooling modes so that your space reaches the desired temperature at the time of a scheduled setting change (not after).
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