The influences of temperature and residence times on the conversion and product distribution during hydrothermal carbonisation of municipal solid wastes were investigated. Analysis of variance and reaction severity were used to comprehensively analyse the experimental results. Analysis results showed both reaction temperature and residence time had varying degrees of impact on production distribution and hydrochars characteristic, while the effect of combine temperature and time was negligible. It is novel to find that the products yield was a linear function of the logarithm of the reaction ordinate. Base on comprehensive consideration, 240 °C to 260 °C and 50 min to 60 min would be the optimised reaction region to achieve relatively better economic benefits for hydrothermal carbonisation of municipal solid waste. By employing the analysis results and estimated models of high heating value and solid yield established in this article, predicting the product characteristics that have not been explored experimentally become possible.