Good Morning all and welcome to HCI. Today I am reviewing the tCheck, an at-home THC potency tester, available from Amazon currently (12/29/24) for $329.
Returns a numeric value for concentration rather than a color you have to interpret (See my review of the PlantCheck Test Kit!).
The Good:
Simple to use
No reagents – put a drop of oil on the slide and test it in the machine – very simple.
Repeatable results – This is critical to your success in using the device. If you take the same sample and measure it (presumably at the same temperature, but I will test this more as time goes) two different times, even hours or days apart, you will get the same concentration result from the machine.
The Less Good:
The first infusion tested scored a concentration of THC above the theoretical limit (based on 20% decarb loss). A calibration solution and setting would correct this, but tCheck has yet to implement.
What to Do:
Buy a tincture of known concentration from your dispensary and use it to calibrate your device. NOTE! You will need to manually adjust the results presented by the tCheck – it has no calibration function.
To do this, take the reported value of the purchased tincture from the tCheck and subtract the known concentration (from the tincture label). The result is how far off the machine is. Simply subtract that value from your measured concentration going forward and you’ll have a REASONABLE IDEA of concentration.
If you want to get sophisticated, you can use multiple solutions of different concentrations to calibrate – one of just MCT oil or alcohol WITHOUT any THC – this will be your zero. Then measure at least one and preferably 2-3 (think low, medium, high) THC-bearing infusions of the same carrier solvent. Put the results on a plot (known concentration is your X-Axis, measured concentration is your Y-axis), then connect the dots. Now for every infusion you test, you can look up the measured result on the chart and use the curve represented by your calibration to approximate actual concentration.
How the professionals do it:
For comparison, the standard for testing THC concentrations in solution ‘professionally’ is to use an HPLC column. HPLC stands for High Performance Liquid Chromatography, and is a complex and extremely expensive proposition to run at home.
In Summary, the tCheck strikes a workable balance between affordability and usefulness. It costs nothing but a drop of oil and some battery power to conduct your tests, yields repeatable results, and is an exceptional tool for gauging the RELATIVE strength of your infusions. If you are preparing products for sale, my recommendation is to send your testing needs to a local lab and let a professional chemist give you both precise and accurate results.
At home, the tCheck tells you if your infusion strengths are ‘drifting’ (changing over time from batch to batch, representing variations in process or a problem with your setup), and tells you (based on your body’s reaction to your infusion) whether to go up or down in concentration on the next batch. If you are steady-state with your dosing regimen and don’t really care numerically how much THC is in your infusion, save the money and take a pass.
Recommendation: Buy the tCheck under the following conditions:
- You infuse frequently OR
- You have not established your routine dose and don’t want to guess OR
- You are making edibles and want a measured concentration rather than a theoretical
Future Plans:
- Build a calibration chart (get several samples of known but varying concentrations and plot measured vs. actual)
- Test more than one machine to see if the results for a given concentration vary between machines
That’s it for this review. Please feel free to post a comment, ask a question, or respond with how you evaluate the strength of your infusions at home.
Thanks!
