I was looking at the Radiacore on and off for a week or two and finally just jumped on it. I don't have any experience with dosimeters/spectrometers, and was expecting the Radiacore to be a bit confusing to use initially but it was the opposite. The device is small, super simple to use and even without reading their website/manual only takes a minute to learn. The iOS app, while new and in development, also works flawlessly for current features and looks good. I love it when companies take the time to work on phone apps and theirs already looks great. Also super simple to pair, works instantly and you can edit the device settings from the phone app.

Overall, this device clearly had a lot of effort put into it to make it work well for life and be sleek and small so it's not a hassle to carry around. Like double the size of a stick of gum. The price is absolutely worth it if you have a use case for it or are just an enthusiast that wants a better (and cooler) device to use.

Spectrum analyzer with well detailed resolution. Highly recommended for novice!

If you can afford it, Highly recommended fir beginner as an EDC. It will open up the world to you of where normal sources of radiation are found! Recommended for teachers, students, semi-professionals, and those just curious about radiation.

This is an interesting device. I've had a bit of time to tinker with it and have taken it out in the field. It's not a geiger counter. A geiger counter uses a geiger-mueller tube. A typical thin-walled geiger tube can only really register beta and pick up that there is radiation present, not its energy. It's basically numbers of clicks of ionizing radiation without being able to tell you anything about it. This is a scintillator that mostly picks up gamma and tracks voltage of counts in kev. It tracks these counts in spectra, spectrograms over time, and location. It's not quite a lab-grade device, but it puts this sort of monitoring and tracking into an affordable device. It's the kind of device you can carry with you and track radiation levels and doses around your location. You can put it next to an emitter, take a spectrum and identify the type of emitter. If you have an alpha or beta source, like uranium or thorium, it doesn't necessarily read it directly, but records the gamma emissions of decay chain products to identify the source. It's very sensitive to these types of sources in a way that a cheaper geiger tube device usually isn't. I think that the intended "killer ap" would be using it to monitor food sources down wind of Chernobyl. It's a European product in that way. That's not as much of a concern for me. For me, it can be a bit of a toy where I can take spectra of common emitters, like uranium glass, vintage dishes, lantern mantles. I've figured out that my downtown areas is slightly more radioactive than where I live. However, it's not a toy. It's a pretty serious device. There's a feature in the app that lets you identify emitter types through the differing peaks on a spectrum. You can take a baseline background reading and subtract it from your spectra to really make the source type more clear. It really does do a lot for the money. I use it as a safety device when I replace smoke detectors for people. I can check them for radiation emitters before disposing of them so i don't expose myself and others. As well, I run a desert education group and it helps in identifying minerals in the field. I found out one of my camera lenses is a beta emitter (thorium glass) which doesn't change much, but I'm happy that I know not to carry it in my vest pocket for 12 hours a day.

My heads up is that the Android app is much more mature than the iOS app. The iPhone app is missing a lot of features, but it seems like they are updating about once a month. As of February 2024, the tracks feature works and the radiation level and dose rate features are working. You can take spectra but can't save them yet. I hope this gets fixed quickly, since this is maybe the best feature for me. The android app has pretty modest requirements, so I borrowed an old Android phone to save spectra and do background subtraction until these features are added. I don't think this is a deal killer. Also, the Android app has some odd English locutions so it might take some time to figure out what these features are, and you might need to refer to the documentation a few times before getting comfortable. So far, the iOS app is much more intuitive, though it is a work in progress.

The device without associated software is not better than a lot of similarly priced products, it works for real-time dosimetry and has a rather responsive dose-rate metering capability. Where it shines is in ability to transmit the data in real-time, or retrospectively, to cell phone or to a PC and perform additional post-processing of data, including spectrometry. The PC software is not very intuitive. I have been in software business for thirty years and I had some difficulty navigating around and figuring out how to retrieve and save specific data, load into graphs, etc. Other than that, it is an outstanding value. I wish they made one with EMP protection, I would pay an extra $100 for that alone and a more robust casing. Something like the Mirion DMC 3000 series.

I spent forever in analytical labs in college and am now older, and the thought that you can get a gamma radiation spectrometer that fits in your pocket and costs a few hundred dollars blows my mind. But it is exactly that. (I'm using the associated Android phone app for reference.)

The unit's operation is a bit obtuse in stand-alone mode, but when connected to a phone using the free app it is very intuitive and really comes alive.
Using an old radium altimeter dial it is easy to calibrate, and the spectrum is spot on for other elements I've cross checked with it (Am, U, Th). It is an order of magnitude more sensitive to gamma/x-rays than my consumer-grade Geiger counter.

The mapping function works well and extends the device's usefulness. The manuals are thorough and easily followed. Customer service was helpful and did not yell at me for NOT reading the manual completely before asking stupid questions.

If you have the slightest bit of tech-nerd in you you will love this.