It's rare to find a piece of technology that has a genuinely mindblowing feature, but the CAT S62 Pro rugged smartphone is one of those. With a built-in infra-red radiation sensor for thermal vision, you can unveil a magical hidden layer of the world around you. What you do with this newfound superpower is up to you.

The CAT S62 Pro is now available internationally for around $600.

FLIR Sensor

As the standout feature of the CAT S62 Pro, I wanted to start this review unconventionally by talking extensively about the embedded Lepton 3.5 sensor, sourced from Teledyne FLIR. Normally reserved for military and professional applications, infrared radiation detection enables you to view a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that's not visible to humans.

The Lepton 3.5 sensor is the latest embeddable version that offers 160 x 120 resolution, though by default this is overlaid onto a mixed reality mode using a dedicated FLIR app on the CAT S62 Pro. Although the resolution sounds low, it's a four-times improvement over the previous generation and provides more than enough granularity for most applications, as you'll see below. Remember, this isn't like taking a photograph—it's another layer of data to overlay onto reality.

To test out the FLIR sensor, we took a walk around the garden on a cold April night. For the full effect, it's definitely worth watching the review video from which the screengrabs below are taken.

First, we looked at some bulk compost bags that had just been delivered that morning. These are made from the green waste of the local area, and you could immediately see that they were still very much actively composting. The top appear ascracked lava, and digging away underneath the surface revealed very high temperatures. This compost should be left to decompose a little longer, or risks burning the roots of new seedlings.

It was fascinating to see how much heat is retained by large rocks. Below are some gabion rock walls that hold back our hillside; they're a good 10-degrees Celsium above the ambient temperature. We could really benefit from that by planting against them to protect against frost.

Below is a Hotbin composter. The company claims it can reach up to 60-degrees Celsius, which is needed to break down harder organic waste such as bones—but I've never really believed those claims. But even on a cold spring night, digging in revealed temperatures up to 50-degrees, so it seems feasible after all.

Water also appears to retain a lot of heat—you can clearly see the water level in this opaque rainwater collector.

Footsteps could also be seen for about thirty seconds after the fact; I had no idea that much heat was transferred to a surface with momentary contact. I can imagine this would immensely useful when hunting, both for tracking the live animal of course, and its path when you're close.

 

We were also able to identify hot water pipes around the home, and some very damp areas of concern. My office was a mess of hot plugs and adaptors, but most interesting were the Nanoleaf light panels, in which you could see where the LEDs were wired (the panels were off at the time).

The FLIR app has a high degree of customization, including changing the color scheme, mixing in more of less of the real camera view, and manually locking the temperature scales. By default it'll automatically scale the view depending on the temperature range. You can also add measurement points for a rough indication of the actual temperature at a specific point or average over an area. Mostly, I left it on the default color scheme and dynamic scaling, with object outlines rather than a full mixed camera view, as that seemed to be the most useful to a layperson like myself.

You could actually buy the sensor alone for around $200, but of course, you would need the smarts to integrate this into your own camera system. The closest offering from the FLIR company for a similarly specced complete package appears to be the C5 model, which retails for closer to $800. As a feature on a $600 smartphone then, I'd say it's good value for money and a lot more convenient than carrying around a dedicated device.

CAT S62 Pro Hardware

Featuring a 5.7-inch TFT LCD with Gorilla Glass 6, the CAT S62 Pro eschews a notch entirely. There's around 2mm of bezel on the left and right, and 10mm or so on the top and bottom, resulting in a fairly low screen-to-body ratio of around 69%.  Colors are reasonable and it feels bright enough in daily use, though like most smartphones visibility in direct sunlight is difficult.

With a resolution of 1280 x 2160, it's higher than HD, but not quite Retina-level. I don't have any complaints about the screen, but nor is it an aspect of the phone I would labor over and tell you how great it is.

At 12mm overall thickness and 250g weight (0.47-inches / 8.8 ounces), with a solid metal band around the edge, it's certainly a chunky phone. The back is a durable rubberized plastic, with a textured area on the lower half to help with grip, and feels great in hand. Easy unlock is provided by the fingerprint sensor, which worked reliably for me throughout testing.

The CAT logo is prominently embossed in the top right. On the left side, you'll find a programmable orange multifunction button, and a dual-SIM tray with a shared micro-SD slot. The power and volume keys sit on the right, though in one-handed use the power key feels a little off. On the base is a bare USB-C port with no cover provided, but I had no issues after submerging it in water and dirt.

The CAT S62 is about as rugged as a phone can get, with both IP68 and IP69 rating, protecting against water and dust ingress, and meets the MIL-STD-810 specs. This includes submersion up to 2m for 60 minutes, and protection from high-pressure water jets. Drops up to 6-feet should also be no problem.

I'm not going to deliberately try to destroy it, but it survived some drops in the dirt and water fine, even without a rubber cover on the USB port.

Performance and Specifications

Rugged phones and top performance don't usually go together, and the CAT S62 Pro is no different, featuring 6GB RAM and a three-year-old Snapdragon 660 CPU with Adreno 512 graphics.

Geekbench 5 measured a disappointing single-core CPU score of 294, multicore 1403, and a GPU compute OpenCL score of 574.

The 3DMark Wild Life test ranked the device as more powerful than a mere 9% of phones tested this quarter, and in the bottom 3% overall, managing a paltry two frames-per-second. That said, I was able to play Call of Duty, though I wouldn't describe it as smooth. Clearly, this isn't a gaming phone.

More worryingly, I felt like the general interface had an almost imperceptible lag to most actions. Even with a DNS blocker on the network, browsing the web was sluggish. Loading times in general on the CAT S62 Pro are also slow, likely due to the eMMC 128GB storage. Generally speaking, the performance was acceptable, and I was able to comfortably use it for daily tasks like Slack, Google Discover, Gmail, and Reddit. However, users of pro apps may have issues, and gamers should obviously look elsewhere. Sadly, flagship rugged gaming phones with FLIR imaging is a niche market that manufacturers have yet to explore.

Running stock Android 10, updates do seem to be timely, typically every three months. The latest at the time of testing is from April 1st, so you should be able to rest safely in the knowledge that security won't be an issue. CAT has promised to update the device to Android 11 in due course, though this hasn't yet materialized in the six months since the phone's release.

The Cameras

With the FLIR sensor being the main imaging feature here, you'll only find a single rear-facing 12MP f1.8 sensor. In good light, photographs and videos look sharp and more than adequate for a mid-range phone. It's not stunning by any means, but you won't be disappointed. If you regularly find yourself using the zoom or macro lenses on your current phone, this single sensor will feel limiting.

The front-facing selfie camera is also adequate, though again nothing outstanding.

Battery Life

The 4000mAh battery is larger than your average flagship, but less than other rugged devices. In typical use I got just over a day out of it. This is a little less than I'd expect from a rugged device and is likely due to the inefficient LCD screen.

A more curious omission from the CAT S62 Pro is that of a wireless Qi charger. Given the otherwise low cost of such circuitry (it's basically just a metal coil), I assume there's a good technical reason why one wasn't included—perhaps because it interferes with the FLIR sensor. This is particularly annoying on a rugged device though, where you don't always want to be fiddling with cables and may opt to block off the USB port entirely with a rubber bung.

Should You Buy The CAT S62 Pro?

The standout feature of the CAT S62 Pro is the FLIR imaging sensor, and it adds a good chunk to the price. If you're not interested in using that, then don't buy the CAT S62 Pro. Simple.

That said, I think it's a fascinating feature to have with a myriad of uses beyond industry professionals. For homeowners, it makes it easy to identify damp or insulation issues and trace pipework behind drywall. For outdoorsy types, you can see in the dark, and get a competitive edge when hunting.

The CAT S62 Pro extremely well built and feels like it would take a beating, at the same time as looking great. But it otherwise offers mediocre performance, an average camera, below-average battery life, and no 5G connectivity or Qi charging.

You'll find better performing rugged phones elsewhere at this price point, or significantly cheaper if performance isn't a priority and you don't need the FLIR sensor. Clearly, this isn't a phone designed to appeal to everyone, but for those who want great quality FLIR imaging, the CAT S62 Pro is an incredible choice.