I'm asking myself this same question, using the Saelig discount code and my Chase 5% cash back for PayPal transitions the MSO5072 will end up costing $811.74, vs the SDS2104X-Plus costing $1249.31, a difference of $437.57. So as a hobbyist is the Siglent that much better to justify the additional cost?
The 50 Ohm inputs on the Siglent is appealing, so is the 10-bit oversampling, the better UI, and 50 MHz AWG... but are those alone enough to make it worthwhile?
Furthermore, what's the resell value on these when I upgrade to the latest and greatest in a few years... I recall several years ago that Siglent was unlawfully blocking the sale of used equipment on eBay, are they still doing this? The Rigol has a software bundle promo right now, and strictly speaking I would have to reset the scope back to defaults if I were to sell it to someone else, so the extra software bundle license might actually have a little bit of tangible value when I decide to sell it too.
I'm a computer systems engineer, so the ease of hackability of ether scope isn't a deciding factor for me. Can the AWG on ether of these scopes be programmatically controlled, say for instance with a python script? i.g. bit banging?
And technically I already have a Logic Analyzer (Diligent Analog Discovery), and I believe ether scope can do SPI decoding using the four analog channels... so I don't see an obvious need for the expensive LA probe, at least up front. I also figure that if/when I outgrow the LA on the Analog Discovery that it might make more sense at that point to upgrade to a dedicated LA device.
My biggest goal as a hobbyist is building my own 8 or 16 bit computer from scratch so that I can better understand computer engineering at the lowest level. For example, Ben Eater's Youtube channel (
https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc) is a perfect example of generally what I want to do. However, I also need something for more general purpose use, such as RF, analog, bode plots, FFT, does the Siglent have a spectrum analyzer mode?