Spend the extra $$$ and buy something else for professional useI am a licensed professional structural engineer who bought the FLIR ONE for iOS in January for the purpose of performing inspections and am in the process of getting a replacement unit.
The original unit operated as advertised for approximately one week. In that time, I was able to pinpoint a basement wall leak location, check for roof leaks, etc.
My typical user experience after about one week:
1. Open app.
2. Plug in and turn on unit as instructed.
3. App shuts off.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 anywhere from 5-20 minutes and it might work for a brief period.
I have found that the image sporadically freezes after short use. The app doesn't freeze, you can move around inside the app, view previously captured images, capture the frozen image multiple times, etc., but the on-screen thermal image is frozen. The unit must therefore be rebooted, which takes you back to the 5-20 minute startup process.
As a professional billing hourly, this process is an infuriating waste of my time and my clients money. It's also rather embarrassing trying to start up the camera in front of a (now incredulous) client for 15 minutes, while staring at my phone looking like I'm checking my email.
General functionality issues:
The unit operates with both a visible and infrared light camera. The image is saved to the app and to your photos on your phone. While in the app, you can "pull down" on the saved thermal image to reveal the visible light image underlying the IR image. I'm unsure of the supposed quality of the visible light image, but it is very grainy and generally poor quality. The unit does NOT allow you to save the visible light image, which would be helpful so that side-by-side images could be generated for written reports. In order to save the visible light image, you must "pull down" on the in-app saved IR image while taking a screen shot of your phone then crop the screen shot. On the plus side, the in-app saved image palette can be changed in the "EDIT" area.
Customer service has been helpful thus far with the return process and has stated that they will ship a new unit to me in 2-3 days. Originally I was asked to ship back my unit and a new unit would be shipped in 7-10 business day. I explained that this was unacceptable, as I use this for business purposes, and the customer service representative was accommodating and friendly.
I want so much to love this product and to recommend it to my national insurance adjuster clients, who would potentially purchase hundreds, if not thousands of these, but can NOT recommend it at this time. I am hopeful that the new unit will function properly, at which time I will revise this review as necessary.
If you are a professional looking to use this for inspection purposes, you may want to spend the extra $$$ on a true thermal camera that doesn't depend on an iPhone or Android app to function properly.
by Hopeful PE