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Last yearGooglemade a decision that, in my mind, was pretty baffling.
The Flir One Edge Pro connects to any smartphone viaBluetooth, and detects temperatures using infra-red radiation.
Ive even used mine to test whether thesidewalk is cool enough to walk my dog or not.
Can the Pixel 9 Pros temperature sensor compete with that?
I decided to find out.
The Pixel temperature sensor works in a similar way.
It can estimate temperature by measuring infrared.
A Flir camera can measure the temperature of just about everything indiscriminately.
Googles temperature sensor is more of a medical equipment, with the ability to measure human body temperatures.
The sensor isnt limited to that, and offers specific modes for food, liquid and cooking surfaces.
In other words, theyre both using similar methods of measuring temperatures, but have very different interfaces.
Which suggests that the two devices may be more similar than I first realized.
That seemed like a pretty good place to start, testing both devices on myself to see what happened.
There was a fair bit of variation.
Certainly not well enough to pass FDA testing at least.
Thankfully I was able to get a reading from inside his ear, which recorded 35.6C/96F.
The Flir camera rocked in at 30.4C/86.72F.
The accuracy on the Pixels sensor could easily be off, because it wasnt designed for dogs.
Which is what I did, to varying degrees of success.
First, I decided to check the temperature of some leftover food.
A filtered water jug straight from the fridge wasnt that dissimilar.
Inside the water came out at 7.3C/45.14F from the Flir and 9.5C/49.1F from the Pixel.
Next up was a cup of coffee.
Both the Flir camera and Pixel thermometer seemed to underestimate the temperature by quite a bit.
Coffee snobs will probably be horrified at that temperature, but at least 104 is better than 68.
Meanwhile a freshly boiled kettle came out at 68C/154F with the Flir camera, and 53.9C/129F with the Pixel.
Or maybe the steam from the kettle impacted the results.
One of thebest food thermometerswill be more useful, and significantly cheaper.
There were some slight variations on my radiator and inside my freezer.
It was a similar story in other areas too, inside and outside my house.
More to the point, I was able to see how much warmer those areas were from a distance.
It was only a few degrees, but it easily showed up in the Flir app.
I was able to identify those spots with the Pixel thermometer as well.
Moving from the patch with the pipework to areas without saw a noticeable change in temperature in real time.
Both devices have distinct strengths and weaknesses to consider.
Is the temperature sensor worth buying a Pixel 9 Pro, or even a Pixel 8 Pro for?
Absolutely not, but if you have it you might as well take advantage of it in appropriate situations.
Get an actual food-rated thermometer if youre planning on measuring that sort of thing.
At the very least it means youre a lot less likely to accidentally end up with food poisoning.
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