Best Infrared Thermometer in 2026?

[dr_clyde]

What’s the latest in non-contact IR temp guns these days?

I have an interest in possibly two different ones. One for work and one for home.

The first and primary use will be checking pre-heat and post-heat temps on metals for welding purposes. I also will be using it for general workshop repair and maintenance reasons.

The second use will be for cooking. I have a wood fired pizza oven and would like to be able to check temps in that.

Do I need one with probes for aluminum or reflective metals? Do you use that feature? Most of my uses would be for steels, but it might be handy. It adds a lot to the cost tho.

Budget is not hard and fast, but I generally like nice stuff. If the cheap ones work great, then bully but if I need to pony up for a Fluke or something I am willing.

Thoughts?

 

[rlitman]

Trying to get a reliable IR temperature directly off of various aluminum and reflective metals is a path I would suggest avoiding. With a pricey IR gun that has adjustable emissivity you can dial in for decent enough accuracy, IF you know the emissivity, and that may work with a highly controlled process. For example, all the aluminum you're scanning is the same alloy, same surface finish and same degree of cleanliness and corrosion history. But that's a huge ask outside of laboratory conditions. In the real world, where you didn't calibrate off that specific surface using thermocouple probes beforehand, forget about it.

Here's another way to look at that issue. In the high emissivity range (>0.9), slight changes in most surfaces will have only a very small effect on the temperature reading (perhaps just a couple of degrees). In the low emissivity range (say <0.4), slight changes in the surface can have drastic changes in the temperature read (potentially over 100 degrees).

Just stick to scanning stuff that's roughly 0.95 emissivity (anything >0.85 is probably close enough for your purposes), and you'll be fine. That works fine for painted metal, or brick in your oven. It's also fine for seasoned cast iron cooking surfaces. I put Kapton tape on bare copper (and tinned and silver plated) electrical bus bars to get readings off of them.

Aside from adjustable emissivity, there are two other differences that set apart the $10 IR guns from the more expensive ones.
1) Range. Most of the cheap guns won't be able to read high enough to be useful for pre and post heat ranges (they're more in the scale that an HVAC technician might use on a coil), and
2) FOV. A narrow angle field of view lets you take a more accurate reading from a distance. These guns are basically a 1x1 pixel thermal camera. Imagine how a single pixel camera's view of the world is. It's averaging the reading across the entire scene. With a wide angle, you end up averaging a huge area, so unless you're nearly touching what you're scanning, your spot size may be too big to stay within the boundaries of the object you are scanning.

DO NOT PONY UP AND GET A FLUKE! There is no magic sauce in any of these. Fluke makes a great multimeter, and some really top notch electrical test equipment, but I own one of their current thermal cameras, and to say it is **** is being overly kind.

tl:dr; Just find something with a max temperature range that fits your needs, understand how the FOV affects what is being read, and stick to reading high emissivity surfaces and you'll be fine with anything.

 

[dr_clyde]

I should point out I know that reflective materials don’t read well, hence the question about the touch probe.