This paper presents the development and validation of a specifications based PID autotuner. The performance of the autotuned PID is compared to that of a PID controller which is designed using a computer-assisted design tool assuming the availability of a full process model. An illustrative example in simulation of a high-order system, for which a simple PID controller may not be an optimal choice, proves that the proposed algorithm works well. Additionally, the algorithm has been tested on three real-life setups: a coupled water tank process, a poorly damped electromechanical system and a variable time delay thermal process. Again, the autotuned PID performed equally well as the model based PID.