GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Needing a way to see what's hot? Maybe you want to hunt ghosts.
The Perfect Prime IR smartphone camera comes in at around $150 and promises to be a portable thermal camera that helps you easily find hotspots. But does it work?
Let's try it!
The camera comes in a carrying case. It's small and feels solid. To operate it, you download the app from the app store using the QR code on the package and then plug the camera in.
There were no real directions on how to use the camera, so as soon as you opened the app, you're left trying to figure things out. After about 20 minutes, we felt we knew our way around the software and camera attachment. Immediately you can see it works when aiming it at a person and looking around a room. You can make out the windows from the walls.
So we decided to see how this thing worked when looking at the heat a stovetop produces, we could see the hot spot, but the temperature it was reporting was drastically different from the temperature gun we double-checked it against. An ice cube seemed to be a bit closer to the temperature gun, and you could see it sitting in the glass on the counter.
But now to something that you might use it for. We aimed it at our front door, which has a draft issue. You can see the cold from the window, but the resolution makes it a bit harder to see where a draft could be coming in.
We did test this in the dark, and you could see a person, so there is hope if you're looking to do some ghost hunting. The camera works, but the resolution really holds it back. It's hard to see fine details, and having it mounted on the bottom of your phone makes it a little easier for your fingers to get in the way.
The positives:
- Ability to see hot spots
- Small and compact
The negatives:
- Hard to see what you're looking at at times
- Inaccurate temperature readings
- No instructions
While the images did show hot and cold, the lack of resolution to help pinpoint what you're looking at holds this back. Because of this, we rate the Perfect Prime IR camera a "Consider it."
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