Some things I noticed on the video…..

The steam is not visible coming out of the tea pot — supporting the 'it can't read hot/cold air pockets' statements…….

The temp reading maxed at 85C, but water boils at 100C —- calibration or set up error?

Pure water at sea level (30 in Hg) will boil at 212° F (100° C), change the barometric pressure or the contaminants in the water and the temperature will change. Pure water will boil at 85° C at about 4000 m. The container and the amount of water also affects when the water will boil. In a clean smooth glass container water will boil at above 100° C – superheating. In the video a tea kettle is used and probably has some mineral deposits.

Measuring the temperature of water with infrared is tricky, often you are measuring the temperature of the bottom of the container and not the water. And as you implied setup and calibration could be the offender.

Just for the sake of diversity, I got to demo a Fluke Ti-25 imager yesterday from an Oklahoma rep. The Ti-25 shares the same thermal specs as the TiR which I was also considering (160x120 FPA arrary, 9hz, <100mk NETD). This one is just the "all bells and whistles" version (more palettes, multi-point measurements, larger temp range). The difference in price is almost 4k, and in the end, you still have the same thermal performance. Anyway, I did a quick video…

Sorry for the video quality, the mpeg compression killed the clarity and added that annoying clicking sound. Sorry for the short video, we both were pressed for time.

Some thoughts…

The Fluke imager uses cores based on Honeywell technology and they seem to visually outperform a FLIR offering of the same resolution. With FLIR's you can still see some blockiness to outlines, but the Fluke was sharp and crisply defined. The Fluke wins on image quality (not that you can tell from this crappy video), but the FLIR's are more flexible (mpeg video out over usb). The Fluke is built like a tank, I believe you could use it for a blunt weapon, lol…Some Fluke vs. Flir comparisons that I am crunching on:

Image quality vs. video out, ruggedness and better warranty vs. tripod mount and battery life.

I never want to have to buy another one of these things again…lol.

Andy