This unbelievable plug-in camera turns your phone or tablet into a thermal camera – a must-have for so many projects

Anyone who’s ever tried their hand at some home DIY has probably found out how useful a proper thermal camera can be, while a whole host of professional tradespeople can attest to that fact. Once you have one in your toolkit, you won’t believe how often it starts to come in useful, too.

If you’re looking for one of the very best high-tech thermal camera options on the market, you absolutely need to check out Topdon’s TC002C Duo – a camera with some wild features that literally plugs into almost any USB-C device to work, including the brand-new iPhone 17 range. To explain what makes the camera so impressive, we’ve broken its strengths down into five key areas

1. Total flexibility

The Topdon TC002C Duo is about as plug-and-play as a camera gets. It has a small flip-up USB-C plug that you simply connect to your phone or almost any USB-C device (whether directly or with the included cable). Once connected, you can use the thermal camera as you like, with the Topdon app being the key to unlocking its full potential and usefulness.

This means that just one plug turns your device into a fully functional thermal camera, with countless different ways to make the most of that feature.

2. An app for all uses

Topdon’s not just left things at the hardware side, though; it’s also crafted the super-useful TopInfrared app, which has guidance for a whole range of different scenarios, to help you use the thermal camera to its maximum in a bunch of ways.

You might, for example, be looking to see how the insulation in your loft is doing – the thermal camera could help you spot where heat’s building up, and where it might be escaping. This can work with a huge range of other situations, too, including pest control, mechanical issues, electrical circuitry and much more, and the free app has a bunch of guides to make this easier for beginners.

3. Incredible range and accuracy

The value of a thermal camera really comes down to how much you can rely on it, and the Topdon TC002C Duo is brilliant there. It can scan temperatures ranging from −20°C to 550°C (−4°F to 1,022°F) with ±2°C or ±2% accuracy, which means you can be super confident that what it’s showing you is extremely close to the scientific truth temperature-wise.

That, in turn, means that you can use it for planning decisions and work without worrying about whether it’s actually feeding you bogus numbers.

4. Amazing sharpness

The Topdon TC002C Duo works in real-time, unlike some other thermal scanners, meaning you can see what’s in front of you without a recording being processed, all at a refresh rate of 25Hz to keep things smooth.

Its camera comes in at a resolution of 256×192 native, enhanced via TISR to around 512×384, which means it’s super easy to see what you’re looking at, and you don’t have to squint at it. Plus, because it uses your phone or device display, you can get things nice and bright.

5. Genuine portability

Some thermal cameras out there are hugely chunky and heavy, weighing you down and requiring their own carrying case to keep them safe, but the Topdon TC002C Duo is far more convenient. For one thing, it’s super small, so you can even put it in your pocket, and since it’s plug-and-play via USB-C, you don’t need any other hardware to worry about.

There’s no external display since it uses your device’s screen, and the whole thing only weighs 1.1 oz (30g), which is practically nothing.