We love the high image resolution, Wide temperature range, 25 Hz refresh rate which makes for a smooth picture, Low power consumption (0.25W).
We don’t like: The fact that it’s only for Android devices and laptops.
| Product | Type | Resolution | Battery capacity | Waterproof | LCD screen | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
TOPDON TC001 | Smartphone | 256 x 192 | Uses Smartphone Battery (4-7 hours for phones with battery between 3000-5000 mAh) | No | Uses Smartphone Display | Click for more info |
InfiRay P2  | Smartphone | 256 x 192 pixels | Uses Smartphone Battery (350 mW consumption) | No | Uses Smartphone Display | Click for more info |
FLIR ONE Pro  | Smartphone (2 different versions – Android & iOS) | 160 x 120 | 45 minutes | No | Uses Smartphone screen | Click for more info |
TOPDON TC001 Specifications
| Type | Smartphone |
|---|---|
| Resolution | 256 x 192 |
| Pixels | 49,152 |
| Connectivity | USB-C |
| Temperature range | -4 F to 1022 F (-20 C to 550 C) |
| Accuracy | 2 C |
| Thermal sensitivity | 50 mK NETD |
| Distance | |
| Storage Type | Uses Smartphone Storage |
| Battery capacity | Uses Smartphone Battery (4-7 hours for phones with battery between 3000-5000 mAh) |
| Dimensions | |
| LCD screen | Uses Smartphone Display |
| Refresh rate | 25 Hz |
| Applications | HVAC inspection, Electrical inspections, Plumbing, Roofing, Automotive Diagnostics |
| View Angle |
TOPDON TC001 – Specs & Review
The TOPDON TC001 is a very interesting alternative to the Flir One Pro and Seek Compact. It is basically a smartphone attachment just like the others, but it is worth noting that this is compatible only with Android devices. Right after we took it out of the box we noticed that it has a minimalistic but very attractive design. Basically what you get is a thermal sensor on the front and that’s it. No battery, no visual camera, no storage. The camera itself feels very light. But there’s an advantage to missing all those components: It has a very low price.
To use it, we simply connected it to our test phone’s USB-C port (That’s the only connector available), downloaded the TOPDON app and we were off. Now we weren’t particularly pleased with the smartphone app, in this regard Flir cameras do a better job. It was also harder to find on Google Play since you have to specifically look for “TC001”. What is nice is that the images we took didn’t have a watermark on them like you’d get on ones taken with the Flir app. One weird thing we noticed is some clicking noises when panning it or moving it around, most likely from an autofocus system.
You can also use an extension cable to connect it to your laptop which does make it even more interesting. We didn’t try that yet. It didn’t even come with an instruction manual but it was so simple to use that it was not needed.
TOPDON TC001 – Thermal imaging quality
Then we had a look at the thermal image quality of the TOPDON TC001 thermal camera and the first thing to notice is the very high IR resolution of 256 x 192 which accounts to a total of 49,152 pixels. That’s literally 2.5 times more pixels than you would get not just from a smartphone attachment but from any kind of thermal camera at this price. Now we noticed the high picture quality in reality as well. You just won’t find a camera with a resolution of 256×192 at this price point.
Things got even better because it comes with a 25 Hz refresh rate. US manufacturers can’t match that because they’re limited by US regulations to 9 Hz but this one isn’t. A 25 Hz framerate is incredibly smooth when compared to 9. Of course, there’s no manual focus on this device and you shouldn’t expect to get this kind of feature that’s usually present on IR thermal cameras that cost in excess of 1000$. To be honest, it is really hard to go back to 9 FPS after using this one because the picture feels really smooth.
One downside is that there is no visual camera to enhance the image through fusion however the app can make use of your smartphone’s camera to enhance the image. Now this isn’t as good as one that’s built-in because you have to do a bit of alignment since the position of the camera on each smartphone differs quite a bit. Sure, it may not be as good as the MSX image enhancement technology but then remember that you’re paying a very low price for this piece of equipment. Because the thermal image quality is was so good, we didn’t really need to use the visual image as well.
The app does come with a whooping 9 color palettes to choose from and can read the temperature in 9 different areas of the image but we mostly stuck with the default one as it seemed to best suit our needs.
TOPDON TC001 – Temperature Range, Accuracy
So let’s look at how good the camera is at temperature readings. First of all there is the temperature range which spans from -4 F to 1022 F (-20 C to 550 C), way beyond what other cameras at this price point can. But of course you have to remember that accuracy usually greatly decreases the closer you get to the top of the range. Now we had no way of benchmarking the temperature since that would have required a very accurate thermometer in order to benchmark it so in this respect we had to trust what the manufacturer had claimed.
Now they claim it has a thermal sensitivity of 50 mK NETD. That would be really good because it means it is highly sensitive to temperature changes but this is a claim I am a bit skeptical of after looking at the thermal images, so I would take it with a grain of salt. Heat sensitivity is usually what gives thermal infrared cameras their detail, the more sensitive it is, the more detailed the image will be.
TOPDON TC001 – Battery life & Memory
There’s no on-board storage on the TC001, instead you just capture the images straight to your phone. This is the norm with any smartphone attachment of this kind.
A cool thing is that they didn’t add a battery and instead it draws power from your smartphone. They claim that the battery will last for 4-7 hours on smartphones from 3000 to 5000 mah and that was confirmed in our tests. Just to put things in perspective, the average battery life of a camera at this price point is about 2-3 hours. What makes this possible is most likely the low power consumption because the TC001 only uses 0.25W. By comparison a Seek CompactPro will use 0.28W and a Hikmicro Mini1 will use 0.30W.
This infrared thermal camera is not waterproof or dustproof so we had to be a bit more careful when handling it but it is worth mentioning that no thermal camera for Android or iOS is. Not even the new Flir One Edge Pro which in theory could have been built to be waterproof has it.
You can find the camera on Amazon but you can also buy it from the official Topdon store or Walmart.
This review and all of the testing involved were done by Kenneth Bryan who is our thermal camera specialist here at Industrial Reviews.
