Performance evaluation of a portable digital multi-frequency electrical impedance tomography system is presented. The instrumentation hardware and image reconstruction are assessed according to a systematic methodology using a practical phantom. The phantom is equipped with eight electrodes in a ring configuration and a sinusoidal current of constant amplitude is injected using an adjacent current injection protocol. Artificial anomalies are introduced as inhomogeneity targets and the boundary potential data is collected. The images are reconstructed from the boundary data using Comsol Multiphysics and Matlab. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) and accuracy of the measurements are calculated. The limits of detectability and distinguishability of contrasts are measured from the collected potential data set for single and double inhomogeneities. The conductivity of the targets is successfully reconstructed from the potential data measurements. The detectability value is found to be high when a single target is close to the electrodes, while the values are less for the target in the centre. Also, the value of distinguishability increases when the targets move further away from each other.