Honeywell RTH8500D vs Lux Products TX9000TS
The Honeywell RTH8500D 7 Day Touchscreen Programmable Thermostat and the Lux Products TX9000TS Touchscreen 7 Day Programmable Thermostat are two excellent devices that come highly recommended by consumer reports and by reviewers on Amazon.com. This post will look at the relative merits of these two thermostats.
The Honeywell RTH costs about $100 and the Lux Products TX9 is cheaper at only $55. Honeywell thermostats are generally more expensive. One of the reasons for this is that the Honeywell has better compatibility than the Lux Products – the former can manage 2 stages of heating and 2 stages of cooling and multi stage heat pumps; whereas, the latter can only deal with single stage heating, cooling and heat pumps. Moreover, the Honeywell RTH8500D can be hardwired into the HVAC so no batteries are required. This is not the case with the Lux Products TX9000TS.
In terms of programmability the two devices are identical: both offer the user 4 periods of heating/cooling to set up for each day of the week. They also both have large digital displays with back lights. These displays are touchscreens that make programming easier to understand. Of the two, the Honeywell has the more intuitive programming, but that is not to say that the Lux Products is hard to understand.
Both thermostats have a vacation mode to allow the user to set a timer so the house is comfortable when he or she returns home from holiday. Both also have a temporary hold to allow quick changes to room temperature and both have adaptive intelligent recovery that pre-heats or pre-cools a room in readiness of the start of a programmed period. Both thermostats can also cycle the fan.
The big difference between these two digital thermostats is that the Lux Products has swing control. This is a function that lets the user set up a range around the set point within which the heating or cooling is not activated. This is a useful function to stop short cycling. The Honeywell usually keeps the room at an exact temperature and allows you to set the number of cycles per hour. This works fine except in really cold or hot weather when the cycle limit is overridden and the device causes lots of short cycling to try and maintain an exact room temperature. Swing control is an issue that it is worth investigating before you buy a Honeywell thermostat.
Finally, the Lux Products also has a program lock with over 10,000 combinations to stop people changing the settings without permission. In favor of the Honeywell it keeps real time and makes automatic adjustments for daylight saving.
As you can see, the Lux Products TX9000TS programmable thermostat is not an inferior device to the Honeywell RTH8500D despite being nearly half the price. The Honeywell RTH8500D is a recommended thermostat but one suspects it is slightly over-priced. The issue of swing control is another key point that has put people off Honeywell thermostats. My advice is to study specifications and reviews carefully before choosing a programmable thermostat for your home.
Honeywell RTH8500D vs Lux Products TX9000TS
Lux TX9000TS Touchscreen 7-Day Programmable Thermostat
At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong answer here, nor is one of the prodcuct necesarrily beter than the other. Both the Honeywell and the Lux Products Touchscreen 7 Day Programmable Thermostat are excellent devices and you will not regret buying either of them. Only you, as an individual can decide what features are most important to you.
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