First Impressions.I like the screen and
GUI better than the Rigol. It looks nicer.
I
hate the placement of the front USB port. My 32GB USB3.1 stick (which works perfectly fine, including firmware updates), has a lip that pokes up. I had to tie a string to it so I can remove it. It's very small (which I like, I don't want a huge thing sticking out of the scope), and it is pretty annoying to limit the space to grab memory sticks from the front of the unit.
Firmware updating was a much simpler process on the Rigol. It's not difficult on the Siglent, but as I expected, it's more work. Even if the firmware file is in the root of the memory stick, you still need to select the file, and click a stupid button to run it. Then it decompresses the file, and asks you to manually "restart the scope and wait" (shut off and power back on, since there's no actual restart button). Eventually it comes back to life, and you need to go to the menu to confirm that the firmware update was actually successful. Assuming it was successful, now you need to wait 30 minutes for the scope to regulate itself before you do a self calibration.
By comparison, on the Rigol you put the firmware update file on the memory stick and put it in the hole. It automatically detects the firmware file and asks you if you want to update. It does the rest.
The end.Firmware UpdatesMy scope came with
Software 7.6.1.20R3 and FPGA 2018-01-03 installed.
The instructions say there should be a 1 or 0 after the 7 to tell you if the V1 OS was installed or not. It was, but I didn't know that until later, thanks to weirdness from the info screen.
For the hell of it, I decided to install 6.1.12 firmware to see what would happen. It worked fine. There was no warning about installing an older firmware, it went ahead and installed as you would expect. After installing, there was more visible noise on screen, and it showed:
Software 7.6.1.12 and FPGA 2017-11-07.
Finally I installed what I assume is the latest available firmware. Now my scope shows
Software 7.1.6.1.25R2 and FPGA 2018-03-06.
The firmware documentation is certainly sloppy. The US site listing the firmware versions has a revisions link that is outdated, so it's totally useless. They should include release dates next to their links.
Anyway, another 15 minutes of waiting before the self-calibration can be done and then I can hopefully use this thing.
![Wink ;)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xwink.gif.pagespeed.ic.cldandycH0.png)