Mag-MateXX0044 Magnetic Viewing Film, High-Resolution Magnetic Field Inspection Tool, Works on Any Permanent Magnet, Reusable Film, 3.125” X 3.375”, Brown

Why did you pick this product vs others?:Works pretty well. I'm using it to view the flux fields in motors, planning to build my own linear motors.

I buy these by the box and hang them all over the house on little nails, like in the kitchen and basement and bedrooms next to the beds, and in the hallway next to the thermostat. -- Luxine / Miss Understands

Very thin magnetic viewer sheet. Had to use tape to remove the protective film with white stripes. The film is very thin and tends to curl up instead laying flat. Placed in transparent page protector. The sheet remembers the last image like an etch-a-sketch and may need to be cleared by passing over a fridge magnet. Came with a crease.

This magnetic film in the description does not show it having two really big white lines going through it, nor does it appear being so glossy as to being reflective. It also will not lay flat on the surface that it is supposed to be displaying the magnetic field of. Bottom line, this is unusable for photographing the magnetic field of anything without your hand in the picture holding it down against the surface, and your reflection is so obvious it requires playing with the lighting to capture any usable image with it. It might be ok for a school class just to demonstrate that something has a magnetic field but its not usable for much of anything else.

Comes with obvious creases and scratches. Has a bizarre "protective" film on top with obnoxious bright white lines that's almost impossible to remove, but apparently you're supposed to know to do this somehow. The sheet is fragile and you think you going to break it trying to remove this film that only reviewers (no instructions) told you to remove. After all that, it's not very sensitive, and it retains a fuzzy ghost image of the last thing you measured. (See image -- there's no magnet there, just creases and ghost images.) Meh.

Used this product to check the magnet timing wheel on my camshaft in my Jeep 3.6 Pentastar. This product worked great!! Helped me to see that my camshafts were not damaged. This item saved me about $800. There is a protective film on the top, please remove. This is what all of the complaints in the reviews are for, it is a removable protective film not a defect.

Update: Whoops, my mistake. It's a plastic protective film that peels right off. Changed to five stars, exactly as advertised. Ignore the below, I'm just keeping it there in case anyone else makes the same mistake.See picture. It works decently enough, but what the heck? Definitely not as advertised.

My application here is primarily for helping to define the limits of the magnetic field of guitar and bass pickups. This turned out to be much more frustrating than expected. The magnetic field of some pickups are easier to define if the individual polepieces used are indeed the magnets. Bar slug or blade pickups (not visible) are harder to determine where the magnetic field truly was, as the single magnet within the copper coil was otherwise hidden to the eye (underneath the plastic pickup cover). Thus, I'm giving this item only 3-stars.