PerfectPrime TC0521, 4 Channels Thermocouple Thermometer

This unit has a lot of good things going for it: Well built, decent price, supports various types of Thermo-couples. I originally didn’t think the unit worked properly as it wouldn’t power up up right - but that was my fault for inserting a battery backwards. Once that was corrected - the unit worked fine and was easy to use with good read-outs. I’ve had good luck with various products from Perfect Prime and this one looks like another winner.

only bad thing i can think of is battery life. thats it. if you set it to 20 or 30 minutes between data points the batteries will go dead prior to finishing one cycle. nocking it down to 10 minutes per data point allows it to complete a full data logging run without the unit going dead.I used this over the last 10 months to measure and data log the temperature of a 40 kw lithium battery bank. I was able to set 4 probes in various locations to log the temps to validate my DIY battery heater system that is essential for my LiFePo4 battery bank as you should not charge at low temps.taking a temp reading every 30 minutes was too long and the batteries would go dead before a full cycle was recorded, had to dial it down to every10 minutes and with the total number of data logged points the batteries would just barely last. it would be nice if this same unit came with an AC adapter so I could log for a week or two straight vice the 3 days that I am limited to with the AA batteries that fit it.now it is logging the summer months to ensure that the cooling system is working as well. I can think of many more things that I can use this for in the future.

I want to love this. Physically it's a great unit, the display is easy to read, the buttons feel good, everything feels like pretty solid quality. Accuracy looks good, and having four channels really lets you do a lot.The problem is that the software is questionable at best. Running Windows 11 on my laptop, after installing I can start up the software and immediately see that the device is connected (via USB or Bluetooth) because the readings on the "soft" device are mirroring the actual device. I can sometimes start the live readings on the chart with a USB connection and see the chart updated in real time, but if I stop and try to restart the readings or do pretty much anything, I can no longer get readings to appear on the chart. Even if I close the graph completely and start a new reading, nothing happens.Via Bluetooth, the device connects easily to the software and updates are again visible on the "soft" device, but I have never gotten the graph to work correctly. Real time readings just don't work. when I give up and hit stop after a minute or two, there is at most 1 reading (and sometimes zero), despite trying reading rates of anywhere from 1 second to 5 seconds.I thought maybe I could try something else, so I loaded Artisan (coffee roasting software) but it doesn't support this device so that didn't help. Connecting to the iPhone app went better, I could see the readings and the graph updates correctly, although the features on the app are severely limited, there's no landscape support, no ability to zoom on the graph, no way to set Y-axis intervals, etc.For the money, I feel like we should get software that works. Something that's updated regularly rather than just left to rot. The phone software's last update was 5 years ago and doesn't even support the display ratios of modern phones (not even my phone which is 4 years old!). The PC software has the distinct scent of Windows 95/98, so who knows how long it's been since they updated it; there's no version info in the zip file.I really bought this to use with software, and using the bluetooth feature. While technically using it with the phone works, I have to wonder for how long? When does the app get to be so far out of date that it's no longer usable? And why bother using the phone app when it has so few features? Since I can't use the PC software with bluetooth, there's just too many features that I can't utilize. I paid for them, but I can't use them. I'll be returning this model and looking for something else.

Excelente producto

I have used this one time. A year later I pulled it out of storage (batteries were remove for storage) and one of the channels was dead, the other three were 50 or more degrees off of each other when I moved the same thermocouple around from channel to channel.Do not waste your money.

It does what it is advertised. Fairly accurate!

After returning a competitor's product for being inaccurate, I had my boss buy the TC0521 for a project and we have been very happy with it. I knew it was going to go well while unboxing it when I noticed that the included batteries were name-brand. They aren't trying to just make the cheapest thing.It works well, and connects easily with the computer, although the program's looks leave something to be desired. It's reliable, saving out data is simple, and it lasts a long time on batteries.I expected much less for the price. Highly recommended.

I picked up the 4 channel USB data logger. The device itself is pretty good - very professional, easy enough to use, good documentation. If I thermally clamp the 4 probes together with copper tape, they all read +/- 0.1C between them, and usually settle to bang-on.Unfortunately, for this device to be any real use you HAVE to use software, and the software is AWFUL. On features, it's actually decent. You CAN do just about anything you might want to, including annotating the graph, changing colors and backgrounds, adding tiles, and so on.Unfortunately, if you try to log directly to a PC, the software has a nasty habit of throwing floating point errors you can't get past, and often crashing in the process. Really great when you're running, you know, a sensitive experiment. On the plus side, the software seems to time-sync whatever you do to the main graph with whatever data it later loads from the logger. So if I tag 8:32:01 PM with "turned on power" for instance, that marker will appear in the correct spot in data I later load from device memory, which I recover after the software crashes during the live run.So long story short, MAKE SURE you do logging with internal memory AND live capture, because live capture will probably fail on you.