Review of the Hunter 44860

The Hunter 44860 7-Day Programmable Touchscreen Thermostat is an Energy Star approved device that comes with a 1 year warranty. It costs a very reasonable $70. The problem, however, with this thermostat is that it has a number of crucial design faults that stop it being a very desirable home appliance.

The Hunter 44860 is compatible with central air, heating only, cooling only, gas, electric and up to 2 stages of heating and cooling. It can also manage single and multi stage heat pumps. Another positive is that this Hunter thermostat can be powered from either the mains supply or from batteries.

The thermostat is a 7 day device so it gives you a program for each day of the week. For each day you have a choice of 0, 2 or 4 periods of heating/cooling to set up. If programmed correctly the Hunter 44860 can help you reduce your energy bills. It even includes Energy Star set point temperatures as a helpful guide in your programming.

So far the Hunter 44860 touchscreen thermostat seems like a good device. The problem is that it has a strange auto change-over function. This function cannot be disabled and it requires that you program in a span or buffer between your heating and cooling set points. Not only is this badly explained in the instruction manual, but also it can interfere with your desired settings. Numerous reviews of the Hunter 44860 bemoan the lack of a disable function for the auto change-over on the thermostat.

The other major design fault is the backlit on the touchscreen display. To turn on the backlight it is necessary to press a button that then starts a program change. It takes a few irritating seconds to cycle through menus to rectify this, by which time the backlight has gone off again.

Despite the fact that the Hunter 44860 has 3 languages, 3 holds and 3 fan settings these 2 obvious design faults detract from what would otherwise be a very good and affordable programmable thermostat.

• 7 Day programming with choice of 0,2 or 4 periods per day of heating/cooling
• Touchscreen programming
  
• Auto change-over
• Auto recovery (adaptive intelligent recovery)
• 3 fan settings
  
• 'Home Today' hold
• Temporary override
• Vacation mode
• Energy Star default settings
• Trilingual display: English, Spanish or French
• Energy Star approved
• Energy Monitor to check run times
• Powered by HVAC or batteries
• Permanent memory for clock, programs and daylight saving
• Under $70