Which Oscilloscope?

You may want to join eevblog.com, and search for this very common question. That forum has negative views on PC based scopes. Lot's of positive comments on Rigol brand, Owon as well. Some of these scopes are re-branded as Agilent (former HP), and they have improved their designs from this injection of intellectual property. Biggest complaint are software bugs, operation anomalies.

There are many youtube reviews once you find a model of interest, and check amazon for reviews as well.

Your price range for current LCD scopes can be found, but may need to bump this up just a little with shipping.

http://www.tequipment.net/RigolDS1052E.html

http://www.saelig.com/PSBEB100/M00062004.htm

I would buy from a distributor within your country, just in case warranty is an issue.

Agilent now changed their name to Keysight. Go figure.

Agilent didn't change their name - Keysight Technologies is a spin off. It makes the test equipment that was the original HP.

You might pick one up secondhand on an internet auction site, Mildred. I'm not going to say which ones, because I don't want it to sound like an endorsement. Incidentally, you don't say which country's dollars you want to spend. You won't get much for that figure in Zimbabwean ones!

USB Digital scope Disco2. Records. I have used it many times and its always on my desk.

Can you stretch your budget to $330?

Rigol Oscilloscope

I don't own one, but have heard good things about them and it is brand new with a warranty.

I've tried the USB scopes and I don't like them.

Well , in my experience, USB scopes tend to be a bit noisier and a bit slower. I use them for things like measuring and recording the analog output on a thermal gun for steel plate passing on the roll line and such.

If you don't ask too much of them they work.

We have a few of the higher end Rigol. Good, but my only whinge is the rotary encoder...it wears out quite quickly and becomes annoying when trying to fine tune measurements/readings etc

Can you be more specific with exactly which USB scopes you have personal experience with?

I am on other electronic blogs and it would appear from the posts there that they are very variable from manufacturer to manufacturer and even from model to model....

Perhaps you could be part of the knowledge base here on CR4 to pick out the good/bad ones....

Thanks.

I am a "conventional" 'Scope user and have two, a mini portable and a Tektronix, both with CRTs...till both are "dead", I will not be buying a new one, though I keep an eye on the market, "just in case" so to say.

The Chinese ones sold on ebay seem to be reasonable and I have not heard anything bad and some people have put speed "upgrades" onto lower priced/lower performance ones and appear to be happy with the results, at least online...

Some of the ones here are offered with 3 year warranty, which must say something!

This one for example:-

SIGLENT-SDS1072CML-Digital-Oscilloscope-Oszilloskope-3-Jahre-Garantie-in-DE-/

If I was buying one, I would search on the web for unhappy customers and their moans and pick a model that is sold well in numbers, has few problems and also has a long guarantee....a job for a rainy afternoon maybe?

ebay also lets you see such complaints easily.....for the above scope, there are no ebay complaints in the last year with this company...in Germany at least!!!

I have one of the BitScopes and I find the software unreliable (freezes and crashes on both our PC and Mac.

We recently bought a Tektronix MDO3012, which is a much more serious machine for our needs and it's still very portable (just not so affordable).

Don't forget to a) let the company know that and b) on the forum for other people (assuming they have one!)

I have actually bought stuff recently on ebay, that turned out only to have Chinese literature, which I couldn't read (surprise, surprise!!)

The company offered me my money back just to get a positive feedback. I refused as I wanted to post a correct one letting others know that the docs were not in either English or German. Idiots!!

They got a very negative but accurate feedback!!!

Yes, China can be a very mixed bag with extremes as far as quality and service goes.

Those that provide excellent products/service must really be cringing every time they hear stories like yours.

I would not be surprised if I have reduced their sales on ebay by a large amount, but difficult to find out!!

The cost was secondary to me.

The Agilent (Chinese) scopes appear to be reasonable as they are offered here with a 3 year guarantee, from a company here in Germany. That is putting your money where your mouth is I feel.....

I agree with you that the serious producers must shake in their shoes sometimes....but it is up to the individual, before he buys, to research his subject fully before buying......

I had a quick look around on ebay here and found that even some of the suppliers here in Germany selling Chinese scopes, are not 100% positive feedback, but usually no scope problems as far as I could see, other stuff.

Then I found a Chinese company based in China with almost 1000 scopes sold and no negative feedback at all, just one neutral for slow delivery (always from China I have found!), called " ndtsuppliers".

I cannot promise anything, but that might be a place to start for anyone interested, though I did not do exhaustive tests of ebay....

The scope we use is the DS1202CA. The issue was not with all the knobs...only one...the one that gets used the most. Unfortunately there is not name/function with this knob on the scope but its the multifunction knob that is used as a push button and rotary knob to adjust the scopes parameters depending on the menu selection...probably called the menu function (guess).

We had two scopes repaired under warranty just before the 3 year mark. We now have a total of 5 with all 4 with the same issue.

On that note...it's probably not the fault of Rigol but the manufacturer of the part. I have a musical instrument (a 1RU synth) that has a similar rotary encoder. I pulled the unit apart and pulled the rotary encoder apart and found that the pcb tracks wear out. I shifted ever so slightly the contact pin and fixed the problem (temporarily for about 2 years) then found the part and replaced it.

What about using multi-channel dataloggers with enough bandwidth to cover your frequency spectrum, or use other circuits to sample and hold those higher frequencies?

Great replies, thanks, guys. The Rigol and Owon both would handle my needs. Main difference I see is the Owon has an 8" screen, the Rigol just 5.6". And the Owon has a VGA output for an ext monitor. When you get old bigger is better.

And if I read the specs correctly, the Rigol has just 320x234 pixels, the Owon 800x600. Does that mean the Owon has way more resolution? Or is my dementia flaring up again?

Wow, that's sexy - and only two hundred bucks.

"Hello, Santa? ..."

If you like that, you will love this:

It's only good up to 200 kHz, but it works good for me on home projects. I got myself the Xprotolab Plain, and use my smart phone as the display.

Looks good but I don't see analogue bandwidth anywhere in the spec.

There are o-scope reviews on Youtube, like this on the Rigol model (which is now a 100MHz scope. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kdjpbWLi7UI

My biggest gripe with USB scopes is the low input voltages that they can handle.

This generally means that you may have to use a voltage divider to read larger than about 25v. On a 2 channel you may be able to read ±50v differential.

There may be better ones that I have not yet discovered.

Try SIGLENT. not used those, but will be trying when needing to replace existing Rigols. Heard good things from different sources.

If any of those scopes come within the OPs price range I'll be in the rather long queue.

Still definitely worth considering with a larger budget.

I have used the Picoscope 2205 USB scope and it has worked well for me. A dedicated machine is nice on the bench, but you would have to pay rather more to get the USB ground which means you have to watch out for ground loops in your test setup. when working on the bench I use a Sound Technology distortion analyser as a front end so the grounding issue is rarely a problem.

I do find it convenient to put it in my laptop bag to take on site instead of lugging an additional instrument.

I narrowed it down to Rigol, Siglent and Owon. Settled on the Owon SDS5032E, with an 8" screen, 800x600 pixels, 30 mhz. Got it for $247 on Amazon, no tax, free ship.

Thanks to all for the great help. Anyone like an old Heathkit scope? I built it and it worked fine for years, then died. I don't have time to dig into it.

But you will have a scope to fix it! :-)

Thats $274, but better then ebay $313.

Yeah, they gave me a 10% discount for some reason, so it ended up $247. It said "promotion" but I don't know what for.