Thermal Master P2: An awesome infrared camera for $179 (for a limited time)

The folks at Thermal Master sent me a new infrared camera to test out. Dubbed the world’s second-smallest infrared camera, it’s called the Thermal Master P2. If you’re curious, I also reviewed the world’s smallest, the InfiRay P2 Pro.

The Basics

This camera is tiny, and it works through your mobile Android device.

Like any other infrared camera designed for a mobile device, you plug it into your phone’s charging port and operate it carefully with two hands. You don’t want to drop your phone with this thing plugged in.

I have a rather bulky phone case, so I need to remove my phone for this camera to work. However, they also include a short male-to-female USB-C extension cable if I don’t want to do that.

I’ve tried using this, and I find it very awkward and unnatural that the image I’m looking at on my phone is not perfectly in sync with my phone. The simple solution is to use a small piece of Velcro to hold the phone to the back of your camera, but it’s so small that it wobbles around a bit, and it bothers me.

So, I prefer to keep my phone out of the case and keep the camera plugged directly into my phone.

It also comes with a molded, protective carrying case, which is perfect for carrying the camera around in my backpack at all times.

Software

This camera runs off of the P2 Pro app. The reviews for the software on Google Play aren’t all good, but I had no issues with the software. I had already installed the software on my mobile device for the P2 Pro camera, so it took me nothing to get it up and running. I simply took the camera out of the case, plugged it into my phone, and the software automatically opened on my phone. It couldn’t have been any easier.

While the software seemed a bit buggy and crashed a lot last year while using the P2 Pro on my Pixel 8, it didn’t crash once while using the Thermal Master P2 on my Pixel 9 Pro. The software lets you choose from several color palettes, display a temperature scale on the side of your screen, record videos, and do a few other things. As I said in another review, it’s perfectly adequate.

One of the software reviewers’ main complaints about the camera was that the video recording didn’t work correctly, but I had no issues recording video on my Pixel 9 phone. Check out my video review above to see proof for yourself.

Resolution, temperature range

The resolution stated on their website is 256×192, but the Amazon store listing claims a resolution of 512×384. Huh.

I compared it side-to-side with the P2 Pro, which has a resolution of 256×192. I zoomed in on part of the image to really see the difference.

What do you think? It’s not a huge difference, but it is noticeable.

For comparison, our standard for home inspections has long been the FLIR E6, with a resolution of 160×120. And the thermal sensitivity is <40mK, which is great.

It has a very wide temperature range of -4°F to 1112°F.

Drawbacks

The drawbacks were similar to those of the P2 Pro camera, which is related to the software. The temperature range doesn’t change orientation when you turn the camera sideways, and it doesn’t remember to display the temperature range on the side of your screen after you exit the software. You need to manually turn on the temperature range every time you open the software. Dumb.

The product description says it has 15x zoom, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that. I don’t think it works. On the other hand, I have never felt the need to zoom in on anything with an infrared camera.

It does not have image blending capabilities, which is a nice feature we use with the HIKMICRO infrared cameras. To see the awesomeness of this feature, check out my sample image of image blending.

There is no option to capture both an infrared image and an optical image simultaneously, which is a feature the home inspectors on my team demand from their infrared cameras.

Finally, this camera is only available for Android devices.

Image comparisons

I like to compare images to my FLIR E6 camera, the standard infrared camera in my home inspection company. While the E6 offers image blending, the Thermal Master P2 does not, so I turned off the MSX feature on my E6 to make sure I’m comparing apples to apples. The Thermal Master is on the left, and the FLIR E6 is on the right.

Conclusion

This camera offers the highest image quality at the lowest price of any infrared camera I’ve tested. I wouldn’t use this camera day-to-day for home inspections. Still, it’s priced low enough to make for a fantastic backup camera for any home inspector or as a primary camera for the occasional user.

It retails for $249 on Amazon, and it currently has an automatic coupon of $50 off, plus you can use the discount code masterp2 at checkout to bring the price down to $179.08. Seriously, this is a steal.