RTH2300B1038 5-2 Day Programmable Thermostat, White

Works very well
Being able to program my thermostat for when I am at work saved me $50 a month last winter. I would set up for 60° while I was gone and then have it warm up to 70° shortly before I came home. Easy to install and worth the money.

Great simple unit
One year later, I knocked a star off. I *hate* the one degree swing. My radiators barely get warm and it turns off. Because the radiators barely get warm during the short time it’s on, the house just doesn’t feel as warm. And it comes on more often. To try to counteract that, I’ve turned the radiator in the thermostat room nearly off, but it’s still picking up the heat from the adjoining room. I feel like I have to rebalance my entire house, which had worked well through multiple thermostats for 30 years before this one.I have a steam boiler with cast iron radiators. YMMV with a different system.*****I’d give this 4.5 stars for a simple 2 wire milivolt system. Like others, I had to call tech support to confirm the wire coloring. Putting labels on the current wires means nothing if your wiring and your old thermostat are not identical to the new one. Don’t bother messaging them through facebook as it’s been weeks and they haven’t responded, but they did answer the phone quickly. Once I remember the wire colors I’ll update the thread as others here were also wrong.I also have the discolored area in the lower right corner but it hasn’t changed since install.Pluses: it works well once you get the wires correct. Heat turns on and off when I ask it to and it’s pretty simple to override the set program.Cons: Don’t even open the manual for wiring infoBacklight only works if you hit a button, which happens to be the same button you’d use to override the temp. So don’t hit it too hard or you may turn your heat on.It’s an extremely basic unit. I do miss the feature my old one had where I could see how long the heat was on each day, but not enough to pay twice the price.

Thermostat
Easy. Looks just like my old one i had to replace! Temperature control was easy. Easy adjustment and look was spot on

No separate heat and cool settings
This review is for the Honeywell RTH2300B1038 5-2 Day programmable thermostat. It works OK (meaning that it turns my furnace on and off), but it has several drawback that don’t match its higher price point over less expensive thermostats that have greater functionality.Installation was not quite as straight forward as I expected, I had to cross reference some youtube videos to make sure I was correctly leaving the blue thermostat control wire disconnected. A few extra details in the instructions would be helpful here. The first thing I noticed when it was connected and powered up is that it had the same dark/dirty area in the lower right corner of the green backlight that everyone else has pointed out. Definitely some quality control issues during manufacturing here. There’s a confidence booster… This isn’t really a big deal, because I don’t need to use the backlight.The next think I noticed was the deal breaker for me: though there is a five-day and a two-day program, there is only a single group of settings that will apply to BOTH the heating and cooling cycles. During the winter, we keep our furnace set a bit lower, usually around 67 degrees. During the summer, we keep the air conditioning set higher, around 75 degrees. You cannot achieve these setting with this thermostat – you only get one set of settings. This means you have to reprogram the thermostat every time the season changes. Call me lazy, but this introduces hassle that wasn’t present with my previous thermostat. This means I would need to write down the settings in some place that I’ll be able to find six months later. No thanks.The next thing that I noticed is that this Honeywell thermostat causes my furnace to cycle much more frequently than the old thermostat did. This results in more wear and tear on your furnace and air conditioning compressors. There might be a place to adjust this behavior, broadening the temp spread for the turn-on and turn-off points, but given that it only has a single set of time/temp settings, I had already made up my mind to return it, so I didn’t bother looking through the manual to see if this is possible or not.If you find yourself in need of a new thermostat, save a few dollars and pick up a Lux Pro PSP511C thermostat that is much better. It has separate time/temp setting for heating and for cooling and you can easily adjust the on/off temp spread so your equipment cycles less often. This saves wear and tear and is also more energy efficient.

Does exactly what it is suppose to doProgrammable 4 settings a day Mon-Fri and Sat- SundayKeep an eye on battery levels replace Alkaline Batteries each fall

I found out to my cost that this unit will not switch 240v. This means, if you’re trying to make your roomstatmore intelligent, this is not the one for you.Thank you Amazon for a stress free return and refund.

Excuse the hillbilly mod. Big hole were the old thermostat was. Used this to replace an old style mercury millivolt thermostat for my 23 year old Napoleon Gas Fireplace. Easy install. I’ve noticed too that during a recent cold snap, the fireplace didn’t need to stay on as long or as often to warm up the room. Save on gas (and carbon tax, ARGH!) Makes me wonder how terribly inefficient the old thermostat was. I also have been using a Honeywell HT-900 fan to help the fireplace fan push the warm air around the room. The old thermostat kept the fireplace going for almost 45 minutes where as this thermostat takes under 20 minutes to do the same thing. I’m impressed.