Well that's the thing. At this low end level, price is pretty much everything. So shootouts should essentially be based on cost. But one could argue that they could be separated into 2 or 4 channel as well.
And it would be valuable to know "How much better is an $800 scope (Rigol 2000) to a $400 scope (Rigol 1052)" and is it worth the money?
At this stage I'm favouring just separate reviews, and then sort summary "shootout" videos of various types perhaps.
Dave.
A scope is only as good as its trigger, so can you set up a standard torture test for the triggering? If there is an identical test for all the scopes, it makes it easy comparing scopes.
This includes tests like:
Accuracy of the trigger level for low, medium and max-rated frequency
Minimum deflection for a stable trigger
Maximum frequency for stable trigger with a 1 division amplitude waveform
Minimum pulse width for a trigger
What is the triggering jitter? (persist all the samples with the scope in dot display mode and see the spread)
With delayed trigger and the display on a 10nS/div timebase, what is the maximum separation in time from the trigger to the display? I think with the Rigol DS1052E, the delayed trigger only works within the bounds of the Long Memory capture duration, so it is nothing like a proper delayed trigger on an analog scope.
How well does the triggering on pulse width work? There was the case in the forum a while ago where someone found that it didn't work at all on a low-end LeCroy scope.
Also, can you do slow captures (like 10 seconds or more) at full Long Memory resolution? The DS1052E seems to disable Long Memory if you set the timebase lower then something like 20mS/div.
The thing is an average scope with a great trigger and delayed trigger is probably much more useful then a fabulously-optioned scope with a bad trigger and delayed trigger. I have had surprises in the past where a cheap scope triggers on everything and the expensive scope looses it when the amplitude drops below 1 division p-p.
Richard