 I think you're going to really like this, it is the Guide Thermal Track IR Monocular. Quite nice design, so what you're seeing on the screen is what I'm seeing through Monocular. Look at this water tank out on the hill here, 1,700 yards away. Detection is great, like I know that there's something up there. Hey it's Alex here from AlexFergus.com. Now if you're looking for a thermal monocular that has a really good high quality thermal sensor and also has all the key features such as Wi-Fi, ART, zoom function, hot tracking and multiple colour palettes but you don't want to pay the five, six, seven thousand dollar price tag that some of these monoculars have then I think you're going to really like this. It is the Guide Thermal Track IR Monocular. I've had this for about three months now and I have to say I'm very very impressed. I was impressed when I purchased it. I went in looking for a low cost, super basic thermal monocular that I could use around the house for hunting, pest control, security and also for reviewing my infrared saunas. I wanted to spend no more than two thousand dollars and just get something basic. I didn't want to think fancy. After about two hours in the shop, I think they were a bit sick of me by the end of it I ended up coming up with this and I was super happy. So be sure to stick around because in this video I'm going to take a deep look at the Guide Track IR Thermal Monocular. I've had this for a few months now. I've used it in all sorts of environments, hunting. I've used it for pest identification. I've used it for reviewing thermals. I've even used it for identifying weak points in my house installation. It's really really cool. I've had lots of use with it and I'm going to show you all my experiences and feedback in this video. So stay tuned. So before we begin this review, I need to point something out. Very recently, just before I was about to release this video in fact, I discovered that Burris, the company that make binoculars and rifle scopes have launched a new thermal imaging line and it turns out that they have used, I believe, I'm not 100% sure on this, I'm 99.9% sure though, that they are using the Guide Thermal brand or product, sorry, and just relabeling it. And this model that I'm reviewing here today is the equivalent of the new Burris handheld BTH35. Now the funny thing is, price-wise, they're actually a little bit more expensive than the Guide, but if you look at the unit itself and if you look at what comes in the package, the accessories, and you look at the specs, they match up 100% in terms of what Guide are offering. So again, I've had this verified now by another person at a completely different gun store saying that, yeah, it's the same unit, they've just repackaged it, which is reasonably common in electronic space and even in hunting circles as well. So again, if you're looking at getting a Burris handheld monocular thermal, then this video should line up pretty closely, if not perfectly, with the Burris models. One thing I have noticed that is slightly different is on the Burris handhelds, they've obviously got the Burris logo on there, which is to be expected, but one or two of the buttons have been changed, so they're actually bright red, which is neat. I mean, it makes it a little bit easier when you're trying to orientate yourself or someone else using the buttons. Other than that, those spec-wise, performance-wise, everything looks identical. So what do you need to know about the Guide Track I monocular? Now it's made by a company called GuideSenseMark. They're a Chinese brand and they're rapidly growing in the thermal imaging space. They have over two decades' experience in the thermal imaging industry. They cater for markets such as health, engineering, security, search and rescue, and hunting. These thermal monoculars are rather new to the market, however they're using the same technology that Guide have been using for decades in the other spaces. This particular model is the Track IR 35mm focal thermal monocular. Now they have three product range. The Guide Nano, the Guide Track IR, and then the Guide Track Pro. So the Track IR comes in above the Nano range but below the Track IR Pro range. At the end of this video I'll do full comparison on all those products. This is the 35mm, they also have a 50mm and a 25mm. So again, it is smack bang in the middle of their product range. It costs me three and a half thousand New Zealand dollars, which works out to be about two and a half, two thousand six hundred US dollars. And it comes with a four hundred by three hundred seventeen micro meter thermal sensor. As you can see on the back here, I have the Track IR 35mm version of this monocular. You can see the different options even on the sticker back here. I've got the four hundred by three hundred resolution thermal imager. You can get the Pro version, the Pro range, which is the 640 by 480. We can do some comparisons later on in this piece. And you can get different focus sizes, 25mm, 35mm and 15mm. And obviously I've got the mid range here at 35mm with the high refresh rate, 50 Hertz. Straight away you see it is quite nice design. Fits in your hands really well here. This is 192mm long, which works out to be about seven and a half inches. You can see why I was quite attracted to this monocular over some of the scopes. Because I wanted something that I could take out with me if I'm hunting or going on a bush walk or just around the house. And I didn't always want to clip on and have to clip on and off scopes and stuff. And this is something that's not too big. It's not too bulky that you're tempted to leave it at home. I can pick this up, grab it, chuck it in my pocket and where you go. Or into my monocular case for instance. It does weigh at 485 grams, which is just under a pound. This smaller focus monoculars in this range are obviously a little bit lighter and the pro one a little bit heavier, but not by much. You can see you've got buttons on the top. So your menu buttons, your zoom buttons, power buttons. You have the focus ring around the lens here with the protection cap, which is quite handy to have. On the side here, you have screws. This is on both sides. You have screws for bigots in your house. So for instance, you could connect a laser. I don't really know what else you'd put on it. Maybe a laser. So if I'm looking through this and my mate's beside me, I can shine a laser and he can identify where the target is or where the animal is or whatever. What else? You've got a tripod mount on the bottom here. And over here you have micro HDMI plug and a USB-C plug for charging. Micro HDMI plug is for connecting to a screen. And you have your doctor focus piece and your eyesight. Speaking of dropping it, this is IP66 rated, which means it is dust proof and protected from high pressure water. So technically you can't immerse it in water, but I'd say you could drop it in a puddle and it would be okay. But it means it's splash proof, rain proof and all that good stuff. So that is the device. We'll have a better look at this later on when we're out in the field. But let's see what else was in the box. So we have a quick start guide, which is... It's actually very handy as a good quick start guide goes through everything. You need how to set up the Wi-Fi, how to calibrate it, the specs, and you can see all the different specs for all of the options in the guide. So that's cool. It's got a warranty card and then we've got a couple of things on the bottom here. So we have a couple of cables. We've got a USB-C charging cable, HDMI port, so you can plug it into your TV screen for instance. And then we've got a lanyard, quite a nice lanyard. So you can connect this at the moment. I've got the wrist handheld piece on, but I could swap over and put this lanyard on it. All right. So now we've got a neoprene case, cover case. And lastly, we have a switching power supply in it. So your USB plug goes into here to charge the unit. Now, I just noticed that there's no amount. So because I'm in New Zealand, my power point is going to be different to what you have in the UK or America. So typically when you get devices like this, they'll have something that slides on for your local power point. But there's nothing in the box. So that's a bit of a problem. Not that I'm too worried about it because I've got a ton of USB charges around the house that I don't really even need another plug. And I wouldn't even use this. So that's everything that came with my guide track IR thermal. We have the monocular itself, quick guide, warranty card, lanyard, charging cables, HDMI cables, carry case, and a power point adapter that doesn't really work. So I figured the best way to show you the true capabilities and the features that the guide thermal IR has is to come outside and have a look around. So behind me, I've got our little farm, a couple of paddocks. We've got some hills. We've got a bunch of water troughs. There might be some wild goats up in the hills. So I'm going to quickly show you how it looks in person and then we're going to turn this on and see how it looks in there. As we're looking through here, I'm going to explain some of the key features and the things that I really like about this device. At the moment, I'm looking up our gully and you might not be able to see it in the moment, but there are two animals about 250 yards away in this front flat paddock and further up the back about 450 yards away is our water tank, 25,000 litre water tank for the farm. Now I've got my Nikon P1000 here with a massive optical zoom. So I'm just going to zoom in and show you. This is what I'm seeing in person and then we're going to switch over to the guide and see what it shows on that device. So there you see the two animals. You can see some beehives at the back there and then there is the water tank. All right. So I've turned on the thermal and I'm standing at exactly the same spot as where my camera is set up. So you can see the hay shed there and then center screen, you have the two animals. So I'm in white hot mode, so the fence posts, the animals, the tin shed are all white, white hot obviously. You've got the four beehives there, 16 beehives and the hot track is pointing not actually to the hive, right next to the hive is a water trough. So that water trough temperature is hotter than those two animals which are standing right next to each other which is why they look like one. And you can obviously see the trees quite clearly, right? It's quite remarkable how sharp this is. So I want to test the zoom function. First remember those animals are about 250 yards away and then there's that water tank 450 yards away. Now you see the picture and picture mode there. Again it is digital zoom, it's not super sharp but for this price thermal, it's not too bad. It's not too bad. So let's look at all the colour pellets first. Now I personally use white hot the most. There are five options and I've just found this to be the best for my environment. Before we go through them actually, there are three colour image settings and there's enhanced, highlight and nature. So nature suits me the best probably because I'm looking out at nature most of the time. Enhanced just makes everything a little bit sharper or not sharper, just brighter. Highlight makes the contrast a lot sharper so the white really sticks out. I mean it's good for identifying say animals or real hot spots but obviously once it's hard to know exactly what you're looking at. So for instance that tank at the back it's just a white blob. I put it into nature and you can make out the difference. So black hot just reverses everything. So the cool tree, the leaves in the tree which are in the shade and the breeze were previously black now they're white because they're cooler. The animals are gone black. The hot water in the water tank and the sun is gone black. The rock faces gone black. So you know it's handy but again I still prefer the white over the black. Here we got red hot which is similar to white hot however the really hot objects have a red hint to them which is good for quick scanning. Iron is what many people typically think of when you say thermal imaging. You know that sort of red, yellows, purples look and then you have blue hot. Now I did like blue hot when I first got it this was my go-to. I guess again you've got the contrast but you can still make out what things are. You can see this tree shape. You can see the water tank just and it's very apparent where that cool and hot cutoff is. So for instance this tank I'm looking in front of us it's about 30, 40 yards away. You can see the water level where the water level is there because the hot air above the water tank is a lot hotter than the cool water. So here I'm going to show you how the guide track IR works on the iPhone app. So I downloaded the app I connected it together they sync up via Wi-Fi it took me a few seconds to set up. So what you're seeing on the screen is what I'm seeing through Monocular. So this is obviously a driveway and I am in the white hot mode at the moment. You can see the tree line which is about 500, 600 yards away and you're seeing the picture and picture in the top left there that's just magnifying whatever is in the center of the screen and the hot track feature which is that little cursor bouncing around. So in the app as well you have direct access to all of the settings for the thermal. So you can do this through the device or you can do it through the app it's a little bit easier actually through the app. So for instance I can change brightness settings contrast the picture mode enhanced highlight nature I typically use nature for most outside shots I can change the brightness and the contrast and I'm just pushing these buttons here I can turn off picture and picture and hot track and then of course you can change what type of color palette you want. So I'm using white hot but you can go to iron blue hot you can take photos and record directly through the app as well. So now we've seen the guide track IR in action there's a few other things I want to show you about the unit itself. Now on the top here you see you've got a bunch of buttons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 These all obviously do different things you've got the power button at the front menu button another zoom button and the calibration slash photo button now they all have secondary functions the zoom for instance you hold it down it does a smooth zoom which we saw outside it also changes the image between nature enhanced and highlight the back zoom that changes your color palette menu you've got two menus you hold down for one menu you click once for the other menu and power off mode is actually pretty cool here so you can just hit it for a brief moment like half a second or so and it will turn off the screen and that leaves the unit running but the screen is off it saves a lot of battery life. They've set a 5 hour runtime on this and I believe that I haven't quantified it yet but I've used it many nights going out shouldn't posthumes or rabbits and just around the house testing saunas and stuff like that outside I also mentioned the front manual focus ring which is this ring here it's a nice like rubber texture grip you're not going to bump it or anything like that it actually does need a firm grip to adjust it is a little bit sticky in places and I know I mentioned it is there's a slight delay so between the stickiness and that um that delay the focusing it can be a bit tricky getting it bang on which is why once I'll have it in focus for you know a couple hundred meters I tend to just leave it there you also have this eyepiece at the back and they call this the light leakage eyepiece so when it comes to your eye there is no light being emitted around the face you know lighting yourself up they do have the track IR pro range which is quicker to turn on doesn't have these bright lights and is a lot quieter as well and that's designed for the hunters so that could be a better option for those who have a little bit more money and a little bit more serious about your hunting the rear button at the end here is for taking photos so you can snap photos to get video recording on here you just hold down that photo button for a few seconds and then it starts recording unfortunately when you're recording you can't zoom you can't get into the menus or anything like that so you want to make sure everything is set up before you start recording but it's still pretty cool and speaking of recording this device has a 16 gigabyte internal memory which is huge because you're only recording at a pretty low resolution anyway like your 3400x300 it's quite low resolution in today's standards it means you're going to get like 26 hours of recording on this before you have to delete it which is insane it will probably never happen how does the guide monocular hold up with object detection at long distances now with a 300x400 meter thermal sensor and a 35mm focal length this isn't your go-to device if you're looking out to 1000 yards for instance however on the website guide has stated that this particular model and I'm going to quote you here has a detection range of 1.8 meter man, 6 foot man of 1000 meters which is 1050 yards maybe more than 1100 yards and a 500 meter recognized range I'll set this up to look at this water tank out on the hill here I've got my range finder I'll find out exactly how far away it is 1658 yards so to fair distance whether I'll be able to see anything through this I'm not too sure first things first though so you know what I'm looking at I've got my Nikon P1000 we're going to zoom in on this there it is two water tanks 1700 yards away I've got track IR on so it's automatically going to go to the hottest point and we're on white hot mode it's somewhere in the middle here so straight away you can't see it alright I know where it is but I can't see it through here as I zoom in though let's see if anything changes there we go as I zoom in the track IR picks out the water tanks but if I didn't know that there I wouldn't be able to spot them that is pushing it though it's probably not the best example to come up with you can see them though as we move out you can see there's two white blobs there I wonder what would have been in different settings in fact in black hot they're a lot more apparent and there we go in red hot those you can see the benefits of red hot there because those two red blobs on the hill they're the hottest points right though not quite as hot as the corner of the shed right in front of me so anyway it's probably a bit too of an extreme range to truly push this device it would be cool doing that with one of the top of the range pros with the 50mm focal length because that would probably be a lot more clear as I look out there now I can see the slight reflection from the sun on those tanks but again that's 1,600 yards away that's a fair distance another feature that the guide track IR has is the stadia metric range finder tool now this allows you to get a rough estimate on distance if you're looking at a rabbit a pig, wild pig or a deer what I'm going to do now is I'm going to pull up the range finder mode now I could do this directly through the thermal using the buttons on the top or I can do it through the app I'm using the ladder at the moment I don't have to move around pushing all the buttons and it's just going to look horrible so I'm going to pull it up and straight away you see these two lines and now if I'm looking through the thermal I see exactly the same thing here except the lines are I think a green instead of red now all I do is I adjust these lines it's actually really easy to use on the app just using your finger drag and drop I just adjust these lines to get the height now you do that from the height of the animal from its feet it goes right up to the top of its head again we're assuming that that's a deer right 150 cm tall deer now based on those measurements you can see in the top left hand corner of the screen there it's saying if that was a deer it is 56 meters away if it was a boar 33 and if it was a rabbit 13 now 56 meters that's pretty good because I use my Bushnell Fusion range finder before filming this and that distance from where I'm standing is 55 meters 60 yards so 55 meters so that's actually really really good 56 meters versus a 55 I mean if I play around with this a little bit more you know I don't know how long the grass is there I mean you could say it's pretty much bang on now let's do the same test for the boar I'll take it down to that third rung there is a few inches of grass there so alright we'll just go with that and now that's spitting out 61 meters for a boar so it's a little bit different 10% different but again for a thermal using algorithm to calculate range it's pretty good I mean it's better than I expected to be honest a couple of things I forgot to mention the device also has a standard tripod mount at the base of the unit which means yes you can put it on a tripod but you can also screw in jovie little handles or any other camera accessory which is really neat I haven't done this but you easily could you could take something like this little mini tripod flexible legs take it out on the hill set it up on say like a a picked up side and just have it sitting there at night time for instance or low light and then have your phone displaying what's on the screen and you can be sitting there relaxing you don't have to hold it you don't have to always be watching the site you can be looking around at other things and then when it comes out you've got the phone you can see it and away you go so that's really cool and you could use the micro HDMI port on the side the photos from here are very good I think what happens is there's too much movement and that war is a little bit blurry I'll put a few up so you can see them the videos on the other hand are fine it's exactly what you're seeing through your eyes so that's good it's got that 50 hertz refresh rate so that's obviously helping with the videos behind me we have our neighbors hill that's about 400 yards away there's some pine trees up there and very frequently there's goats that come out the other night I was looking up there through the thermal I couldn't see anything but the track IR was bouncing around in the trees I got my binoculars out and yep there were a couple of goats just walking about 10-15 meters up from the tree line and they were just walking around so that's another reason why that track IR is really good for pest control and hunters we're up in those trees right and without the thermal I know I heard the animals and that's why I got the thermal out but if I was out hunting and sitting up on the hill scanning around that thermal would have picked them up straight away as soon as I went over that area so let's zoom in now see if we can see them through here because I've spent too long fluffing around I wouldn't have known those goats were there if I was just looking around through my with my eyes if I had binoculars maybe but there's a lot of things to look at what if I looked in that particular spot who knows with the thermal I can just scan around daytime or nighttime boom there's something up there you get your scope out you get your binoculars out and yeah there where you go you know there's an animal there yeah quite far zoomed there but you can see a couple goats in there now this is with a high-powered magnification so you see the other one and it's up there so they're just going in and out of those trees again to spot them without a thermal would be very very difficult track IR going straight up into the bush there into the trees it's bouncing between two of them by the looks of it there's a couple up there the only downside with the track IR is when it's over the target or the animal it actually makes it a little bit hard to see so I'm going to zoom in now but you can see that's about 400 yards right maybe a bit more and obviously I wouldn't know if that's a goat deer a sheep it's just because I heard the goats crying out before so that's it full zoom there just changing between the picture modes so again detection is great like I know that there's something up there let's try a different picture that's black hot red hot iron blue hot it's thick trees that I'm looking at and it's picking out those black dots and see this is where the red dots really good because it's picking out those animals in the bush there that I wouldn't be able to see otherwise so anyway you can see how dark it is when I turn that off and then turn it on and when I was looking to the thermal I mean again you wouldn't have known light or day right quite incredible huh so that's how powerful these things are for night time use and it's why I gave up I didn't bother with the night vision so now you've seen the device in action and I've shared some of my experiences with it I thought I'd do my concluding remarks both what I like and what I don't like and then my final summary so let's start with what I do like about the device and there are a lot of things here firstly the battery life 5 hours battery life I think is great like I said before I don't have to charge this all the time often I go out use it for 20 minutes or so come back in I don't have to worry about charging it again secondly is the size personally I think this is near perfect it's great if it's smaller and lighter and all that stuff but it can fit in my hand easy it's not too heavy I can put it around my neck and it's not weighing me down I can put it in my pocket if I got cargo pants it's a good handheld size the other thing I really like is the image quality for this price the image quality in this thermal is very hard to beat yes there are better ones out there with higher resolutions and bigger bigger focal lengths but for this price range and this size it's amazing I can see 4 or 500 yards I can identify animals, water tanks it's very clear what something is and what something isn't at 400 yards I wanted something that I could identify targets and then I could use my binoculars or my scope or if need be the spotlight as well if I'm out at night time I just wanted to look at a certain place a couple of hundred meters away and say hey is there something there I can do that with this easy I can navigate it pitch black darkness I can navigate around the house it's quite amazing and it's a very sharp image the Wi-Fi phone out function micro HDMI function is also very very cool I don't know if I'll use the micro HDMI out function very much but I'll definitely be using the phone functions I've touched on the benefits of that before if you're buying a thermal around that thousand $2,000 price mark make sure it's got that function because trust me it is pretty cool if you go hunting with someone else or even if you're on your own you want to set it up the thing I really like is the hot track function again I was going to buy the guide nano the base series of these and it didn't have that function when I saw the hot track in use I was like that's awesome in your image it'll immediately the crosshairs will immediately go to the hottest thing so when I was looking outside the shop as the cars were going past it was going to the muffler and then the next cars muffler the next cars muffler or exhaust as some people call it picture in picture is neat it's not a game changer but it is neat to have saves you having to zoom in and out but it does take up a bit of screen space so there's the downside there splash proof drop proof I haven't submerged this it's not designed to go in water though I'd say you probably could drop it in a puddle and it would be okay but it's designed for out and about recreational use so that's good to know as well these are wifi setup was also another plus it literally took me a few seconds I thought it was going to be complex and hard to manage but it's not and not only is it easy to set up all the settings from your phone I thought it was just going to be a visual out but no you have access to all the settings which means you don't have to play around with these buttons very very cool feature as for the things I don't like about the guide track to be honest it was hard I had to really think about the negatives here but I didn't want to list just of positives so there were three things I came up with first it's not suitable for professional hunters I mean you've got the noise aspect when you turn it on it is quite noisy you have the light at the top a little bit of light leakage through the screen but mainly the time to turn it on if it's completely off and you turn it on to look at an animal it's a good 10-15 seconds to turn it on and that can just that can be the difference between getting a shot at or not and that noise if you're in the bush or close range it could start on an animal so if you are a serious hunter this isn't for you however they do have that pro range which is quite a quicker to turn on doesn't have the light as well so there we go secondly is the limitation of the 5 colour pellets now personally I don't think that's a deal breaker for me but I know some people who are very serious about their thermos and have a lot of experience with them you want at least 8, 10, 12 colour pellets out there to for different environments, different settings and again for me I've just set on that white hot mode in my couple months of using this and at 80, 90% of the time it's all I need but again if you're a serious user you probably want in something with a few more options thirdly is the distance limitations I mean this is good for identifying an animal out to 300 yards beyond that you might know that there's something there but you don't know what it is so how does this guide track a 35mm compare to the other models in this range now it gets a little bit confusing because guide have 3 thermal monocular ranges they have the base range which is the guide nano they have this range which is the guide track IR and then they have the top of the range the guide track IR pro now with each range you have different options some have wifi some don't and then the big difference though is the focal length so it can get a little bit confusing but the range the track IR the mid range you have 25mm option focal range 35mm and then a 50mm of course the bigger the focal length the better the image the further you can see so I've gone smack bang in the middle mid range middle mid focal length I hope I'm not confusing you with all this but overall this is a good price good value good features if you wanted to save a little bit of money for a 5mm focal range or you can go down to the nano of course if you want to go up you go up to the bigger focal length or the pro range remember this has 400x300 at 17 micro meter sensor the nano the base model is actually what I went into the store to buy they have the same sensor 400x300, 17 micro meter but they only have a 19 or 25mm focal length which is 35mm and that makes a big difference because like I said I went in looking at the nano and I looked at this, I looked at some of the high end ones and I was like I've got to spend the extra money how much are you saving if you go down to the base nano at 25mm it's about a thousand dollars less so it is a big saving but I could justify spending that extra money just based on the quality it was the difference between seeing like two 300 meters clearly and four 100 meters clearly like you can see with this that tank at the back for instance 400 yards away it would have been a lot blurrier with that base nano model plus this track IR compared to the base nano range has a few extra features so for instance you get five or six color pellets the nano only has three you got the wifi art function you got a little bit of battery life a few internal features that I don't believe are in the nano so this one comes in the 25, 35 or 50 so I guess you could argue well do you get the track IR in 50mm or do you get the track IR pro in 35mm you'd really have to compare them but I think I would lean towards the IR pro with the 35mm just because you get in a better thermal sensor as for price differences I purchased this for $2,700 and that was from Gun City I'll put a link to them below that's a New Zealand store though if you can buy it from guideIRUSA.com I'll put a link to them below as well and it's about $2,500 to $2,800 USD or thereabouts I'm going to see if I can get you guys a discount code at the time of recording I don't have anything but let me see if I can pull something up and I'll put it in the notes below if I can get you guys a discount code if you go up to the 50mm range you'll spend an extra $500 if you go up to the track IR pro you'll spend an extra grand $1,200 so yeah the prices are all over the place I know it's a little bit confusing so let me sum it up like this if you're new to the thermal space and you want something that you can use for piss control hunting just around the house security then yes this track IR 35mm is an excellent choice to $3,000 I mean for a sub $3,000 unit is I think it's amazing it's got all the features you need it's digital zoom the rain finder, the track IR which I think is awesome picture in picture good battery life, 5 hour battery life splash resistant 16GB internal memory it's got everything you need and it's why I ended up on this when I was looking at all my options if you are a bit more serious then of course you go into more of this you may want to look at the track IR pro mode however if you're in the states you can go to guideirusa.com like I said if you have any questions comments leave them below be sure to hit subscribe because I am going to be covering other gadgets, hunting devices thermal scopes, thermal monoculars and all sorts of other products as well on this channel so hit subscribe below check out my other videos and I will see you soon bye