Raytek MiniTemp - Temp Gun - Features and Testing

After testing the laser on everything, I was sure it worked. Now it was time to test the other features of the gun to see if it was good for anything besides driving squirrels nuts outside my window, or blinding myself.

The backlight was a great addition, I didn't know it had a backlight till I bought it (the demo wasn't backlit).  Also in this picture you can see the "Hold" feature. By depressing the trigger you can get real time temps of the surface, but by releasing the trigger it holds the temp for 7 seconds so you can record it. Very nice.

I wanted to see this baby cook and see how reactive it was. So after making some dinner, I aimed it at a cool burner coil on the range in my apt.  I turned it on high, and watched the temp gun rapidly display the rising temp, it was quite remarkable to see it read the temps and update so fast. I figure if my CPU reaches these temps, the last thing I am going for is a temp gun, I am going for a fire extinguisher. hehehe

In order to get some realistic temps I fired up my Celeron 300A and turned her up to 504Mhz to see what kind of temp she cranked.  86F was the temp at idle after 2 hours. It is being cooled by a Glacier 1500F 3 fan HSF setup. No where near as cool as many of today's Alpha's but it does the trick. At the ends it was 90 and at the core it was 94 after crunching RC5 blocks (GO HARDOCP BABY!).

So that's the inside of the gun, exciting isn't it. About the only change you can make is the switch in the center to toggle between C or F readings, darn handy feature for those of use who are not mathematically inclined, and have to do F to C or C to F conversions. The entire gun runs off of one single 9v Batt.

Overall its a great tool for any die hard temp freak.  Whether you are a gear head geek, computer geek, or R/C geek.  For the 100$ this tool/toy costs its well worth it. With this you can now have instant temps anywhere. No gluing probes to the heat sinks,  or water blocks. No more testing with your finger to give rough estimates.  This is really a great thing to have.  If not for any productive use, the laser on this thing is huge, the dot is at least 5mm big at 2in away, that's way cool. Its a 1mw laser. Their are 2 different variants of this gun. One has the laser and is model # MT4, the other that does NOT have the laser is #MT2.  The Laser versions sell for 100$, and the non laser sell for 79$.  I said that it will read temps on all surfaces, but it will do it better with a matte surface vs. a gloss surface, their are instructions in the manual on how to overcome this. I think it is a very good purchase, and makes temp reading SO much easier.  This is suited for just about anyone that does any mechanical or temp work.