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Night vision is a more useful to acquire first because it is used for navigation. With a thermal, you have to deal with annoying stuff like shitty battery life. If you have a helmet mounted thermal that is not a fusion device, you will have a harder time navigating, and you won't be able to aim. You cannot see lasers, you cannot use sights. You're sort of limited to using thermal as a temporary spotting device or dedicated weapon sight. Unless of course you're baller and have a fusion setup.
Thermal under 4.5k is usable, it just depends on what you get. Armasight Predator 336 30Hz is more than usable and is 2.8k USD. I briefly played around with a Pulsar XD series weapon sight a week ago, they are more than usable for airsoft and are priced at 3k USD. Mid-tier thermals are less useful during the day because things are generally warmer - there is less temperature difference between human targets and brush, and the sun heats things up so it is more difficult to see the difference between brush and the ground. You also see a lot of warm and cold spots that are actually just shadows and areas sunlight has heated up. I do not have experience with a true high end thermal.
I got my AN/PAS-23 off a friend for $5300.
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