Double Naught Spy
Sus Venator
Things like the seek thermal (plugging into cell phones and costing under $300 today) are a good sign of the technology getting cheaper and if your a young enough guy it will be common by the time you are the age of some of the old guys here.
Part of the reasons cell phones and calculators became so inexpensive was their utility in a nearly unlimited market and economies of scale in production. BTW, we had the Ti calculator above. Got it at Fedmart. It was a BIG deal. Cell phones have come down, again, virtually unlimited market of billions of consumers. Thermal optics has a market of hundreds of thousands in terms of hunting technology.
Seek thermal is a toy, plain and simple, at least for hunting applications. A sign that the technology is getting cheaper? Seek has been around for 5 or 6 years now. It has been inexpensive for years and uses far trailing edge technology. The sub 300 buck version is 206 resolution and requires use of your smart phone. In early 2015, the 206 resolution SEEK thermal cost $250. Where is the big price drop?
You can use it, as their ads show, for extremely short range stuff, like looking at the walls and windows in your home for heat loss...which is a valid use and might be fine for hunting if your prey is a few feet away.
Okay, calling it a toy might be a condescending characterization. It really is a thermal and you can use it for some things, no doubt, but its capabilities are so limited and the format for use is such a poor for for stealthy application (which you are engaged in with night hunting), that is just isn't very helpful.
Back in 2015, FLIR reduced the prices of their thermal components this significantly impacted the thermal market. In 4 months time, I saw the price drop so much that you could get a 640 resolution rifle scope nearly for the price of a 320 resolution rifle scope with very similar features just a few months prior. (ATN Thor 70mm 320 resolution was $6999 and after the price drop a 70mm 640 Resolution Armasight Zeus was $7200). Note, the lens size is a critical feature here because it is often the single most expensive singular component of thermal scopes, making up 1/3-1/2 of the cost of the scope. There has not been another similar price drop since that time, through prices have come down, but the technology has not improved very much (as noted above) in the basic consumer market. You can get new features, but not better resolution.
FLIR's failure in the civilian rifle scope market (after purchasing Armasight) has not helped with the bringing down of prices. Trijicon's purchase of IR Defense certainly helped mainline high end thermal to the consumer market as Trijicon's marketing far outstripped that of IR Defense.
You made a car price comparison of the calculator to an inexpensive cars of the time (Vega, Pinto, Gremlin), well the iRay 1280 costs more than many of the budget autos made today. It is cutting edge, so yeah, it will be pricey. Your average 320 resolution thermal rifle scope will run you about $3K and average foreign made 640 resolution thermal rifle scope will run you about $5K. Domestic 640 resolution thermal rifle scopes are more in the $6-7K range and go up to nearly $10K.