Topdon TC001 Thermal Imaging Camera

6 Dec 2025 · Topdon TC001 thermal camera review: a great tinkerer’s tool for finding heat leaks and faults — what it’s like to use day-to-day. · Rating: ★★★★★

It sees in the dark

I bought this in December 2022, so I guess this qualifies as a long term review. I ummd and ahhd about getting one for months, maybe even a full year.

"They're so useful for fault finding" temperd with "You've managed without one so far"

"They can see in the dark" tempered with "You have a million torches"

"They're a cool photography tool" tempered with "They take crummy 512x384 photos"

Everything above is true and remains so. But buying it was the right decision. Its proven itself to be a cracking tool. It's helped me find blown bits in circuit boards, add insulation to the cold spots in our roof space, fix the leaky seal on our back door, confirm that the fan I fitted to a radiator was indeed blowing warm air into the room better than without it, and a ton of other things that being able to see temperature differences has helped with.

TC001 in its holder — TC001 in its Holder.

It's a Topdon TC001, it connects to my phone via USB C (hurrah), the sensor is 512x384, it's happy with temperatures between -20C and 550C, it's accurate to +- 0.1C. It's 71x34x13mm (excluding the USB) and it weighs about 30gr.

The body is matte aluminium wrapped round a plastic core. The lens is recessed into the body so it's hard to scratch and the case is well padded and has a cutout that holds it securely. In the box I keep a 1.5m USB extension lead so I can put it into places and keep the phone outside and a cloth to give it a wipe should it get grubby.

I don't have anything more than a very basic understanding of how it works! The lens focuses infrared radiation onto the sensor, which then through a processor does magic and turns the signals into images with warm colours (red, orange & yellow) and cold colours (blue, purple & black) to show you what's hot and what's not. Funny thing, the image sensor is called a microbolometer and the pictures it makes are called thermograms.

In action it's cracking, point it into a totally dark room and before your very eyes colourful images show you what's in the room (at 512x384 resolution). Point it at a circuit board and you can see what's working, and what's not working.

Inside my PC Air — Inside my PC: Air Cooler.

Inside my PC Water — Inside my PC: Water Cooler.

The resolution is good enough, sure it'd be nicer if it was more, but as you can see from the picture of the inside of my PC there's enough resolution to see whats going on, if you look close, you can pretty much read the Cooler Master logo on the fan. When you point it at a running PCB it's helpful to point at things with tweezers or a pointy thing to isolate individual components, but it's good enough to fulfil it's purpose. I've just had a quick look on t'internet and without spending mega bucks 512x384 is about as much resolution as you're getting.

It also does videos

Pros
It's a thermal camera! · It's got enough resolution · Cheap(ish) · USB C

Cons
None