Electronics manufacturing runs more machine vision than any other industry, and it spans the entire resolution spectrum - from 1.6 megapixel cameras verifying a component sat down, to 20 megapixel sensors hunting sub-100 um solder bridges. The trick to specifying these systems well is resisting the urge to buy one resolution for everything. Each task has a natural resolution, and the economical line uses several.
Component presence and polarity: 1.6-2 MP
Verifying a chip is present, oriented, and the right part is a contrast-and-geometry task at modest resolution. With a field of view of 40-60 mm, a 1.6 MP camera resolves about 30 um per pixel - far beyond what presence checking needs, at 65 fps on the MV-CS016-10GC. Color earns its place here: component bodies carry color codes, and polarity marks on tantalum capacitors and diodes are contrast-poor but hue-distinct. Speed plus color makes this the classic high-volume picker.
Solder joint inspection: 5 MP class
Solder bridges, insufficient wetting, tombstoning - these live in geometry and reflectance. A 5 MP global shutter sensor like the IMX264 (MV-CS050-10GM) over a 30 mm field gives about 12 um per pixel: enough to resolve a 100 um bridge with three-pixel confidence. Multi-angle or coaxial lighting matters more than camera resolution here; solder is where lighting budgets should dominate.
Fine-pitch and wafer-level work: 12-20 MP
Below 0.3 mm pitch, BGA balls, 0201 components and solder microstructure push the sampling requirement hard. A 20 mm field at 0.05 mm/pixel minimum confidence needs 400+ pixels across a single QFN - and panels are inspected whole, not per component. This is 12 MP (MV-CU120-10GM) territory at minimum, and 20 MP (MV-CS200-10GM, or the color MV-CS200-10GC when legend and marker colors matter) for full-panel single-shot inspection. Rolling shutter is acceptable here: the panel is stationary under the fixture.
Legend and mark verification
Reading silkscreen, date codes and laser marks is OCR - which wants mono for edge sharpness, but mark presence is often color. The pragmatic split: mono cameras for OCR accuracy, color for mark verification, and fast global shutter color models like the MV-CS016-10GC for the high-speed lanes.
The throughput math that changes everything
Electronics lines run fast: a placement machine feeds a vision check every 200-400 ms. At 5.9 fps, a 20 MP camera inspects a full panel every 170 ms - just enough for a full-panel post-reflow check, and exactly why the 20 MP GigE design tops out where it does (the sensor saturates the GigE link; see our interface comparison). Faster lanes want lower resolution per shot or multiple cameras sharing the load on switched GigE.
Lighting: the real differentiator
Electronics inspection lives or dies on lighting geometry: coaxial light for flat pads and legend, ring lights with polarizers for solder sheen, low-angle darkfield for bridges and residues, backlight for component coplanarity. Budget lighting at least as seriously as cameras - a $200 light upgrade routinely outperforms a $1000 camera upgrade on the same line.
A sensible fleet
High-volume presence lanes: 1.6-2 MP color global shutter. General AOI: 5 MP mono global shutter. Fine pitch and full panel: 12-20 MP mono or color, stationary. This is the distribution real electronics factories converge on - and it is why we stock the whole ladder from the MV-CS016-10GC to the MV-CS200-10GC in new and refurbished condition, with every sensor, frame rate and shutter type on the product page.