Personally, the device would drive me insane. But for the price it's hard to beat. You get what you pay for. This becomes quite clear again here. The biggest problem with handheld thermal cameras is the built-in processors, and so is the cost. This then leads to such effects as a delay in the display when panning (despite 25Hz). Or how long the device boots. Mobile phone models are better because the smartphone can do all the work, including an additional strong image improvement. Or you have to spend more money. It is not that easy to discover the dead pixel count without entering the cameras engineering modes or accessing the dead pixel map. A dead pixel map often exists as an image file containing all the pixels present on the FPA but highlighting those that are market based. The image processing stages read the dead pixel locations out of the image file. Gaining access to the dead pixel map is not a simple task on many cameras unless access can be gained to the operating system and configuration files.

Now let’s look at the camera’s temperature measurement performance. First of all, it has to be the sensitivity since that is instrumental to defining image quality. This camera has a 50 mK NETD which means it’s not bad at all. It means it can spot a temperature difference of down to 50 mK. The lower the number here the more detailed the image will look because the camera is sensitive to even the slightest differences in temperature.It probably won't see much scientific usage so should there be any pixel errors it's not my concern (the display has none, and sensor pixel fault is hard to detect as probably similar interpolating algorithms are used as with photography cameras so I don't know if it has one). Secondly, there was a teardown from Fraser where you can see the greatly reduced quality of the inner workings.

I suspect that the refresh rate is not reaching the spec (or because it's < it's not even close to it) and there is also some lag if I move the camera but for my use it's OK.It is difficult for a user to establish how many non functioning pixels are present on a thermal sensor FPA for the reason that you detail. All FPA’s will contain pixels that are either faulty or produce an output that falls outside of the acceptable specification. The image data from the ROIC is normally RAW and subsequent image processing stages create the Non Uniformity Correction and Flat Field Correction tables that both capture ‘out of specification’ pixels and try to correct other pixel outputs to achieve a good Flat Field output. The dead pixel map is created by the NUC ‘calibration’ process carried out at the factory. Any pixel that produces an unacceptable pixel output value is marked as ‘Dead’. The thermal imager camera is also equipped with a 5000 mAh Li-Ion battery which will ensure up to 6 hours of continuous operation. Whenever low-cost manufacturers introduce a high-end thermal camera in their portfolio, I’m always intrigued. This is the moment where they bring the fight to the big manufacturers and try to bring more to the table in terms of numbers. There’s an unwritten rule: The flagship of one company will be a better offering when compared to the mid-range of another. Why? Because the other company has their own flagship as well which costs even more and thus the mid-range can’t go that far in terms of specs because it will make the flagship redundant. It’s marketing 101.