Analogue Thermometer Accuracy

[gardenfiend138]

So I just thought I'd post this because I found it interesting.
I got my first temp gun a month or so ago, and was checking the temperature of everything and anything I could get my hands on for fun. I decided to pull out some old analogue thermometers (Zilla and Flukers) and set them up in the tank to see how accurate they are, and I was really surprised. They are both accurate within less than 2*F (laying down on substrate, left in for a day to make sure they were getting a good reading).
Then I checked the digital ones I bought, and they were actually less accurate at times--but only because the design of the probe doesn't allow it to come into complete contact with the bottom surface (it remains at least a few mm away from the glass, or gets a bit of substrate under it, which drastically skews the reading).
To be clear, I took readings form the top of the analogue thermometers, and from the area they were sitting on.

Don't know why I wrote so much over something so little, but I'm always reading people who just regurgitate and then embellish things they hear (i.e.- analogue thermometers are horrible). Now I'm not saying to ditch our digital tools and go buy these, but it just came as a shock after all I've read from countless people. I know a 2*F difference is unacceptable for most, which is why temp guns rock. And I'm sure many of the horror stories from analogue users were due to human-error (putting on side of tank), but using analogue tools properly (at least in the case of my 3+ year old thermometers) for cool side measurements isn't as inaccurate as some people might say.

More information to bore you with- I only took readings from the un-heated side of my tanks with the thermometers, so I'm sure they vary much more when using to gauge temperature for a hot spot (even in light of this new information I wouldn't trust them to that). Also, temp gun is a zoo-med one (I know, lame right?), but I checked it against about 10 varying temperatures with a PE tempgun, and it was accurate within at least .5*F (not saying that is a proper calibration technique, just that it reads acceptably comparable to a high-quality temp gun).

Once again this is not a post saying analogue thermometers are acceptable to monitor enclosure temps all over, but at least for me they cut down on checking cool side temps, which is what I struggle with more with that side not being on a thermostat and no heating and all...anyway, sorry for the bore.