Thanks for the information about the relationship between these brands. So the explanations given by the vendor were somewhat inaccurate -- not surprising given the sale incentives.
Let me ask a question which is unfortunately another matter of opinion: Several companies sell what seem to be very similar 100MHz DSOs at almost the same price point. All of them have 7" (or even 8" displays) except for Rigol -- their display is 5.6". So having zero experience with these brands, I would ordinarily lean toward the 7" display, yet several here have recommended Rigol. If Rigol is truly head and shoulders better (and I hope that implies something about reliability), I would forgo my preference for the larger screen. OTOH, if these are a toss-up in most ways, the other brands seem to win (and this includes B&K Precision, Siglent, etc.). Any thoughts on this?
So far there has been little or no mention of hacking. Folks have written that it is trivial to up the bandwidth by two to one with some (all?) of these scopes by a simple hack (in some cases, changing a file name, I believe). Is this widely done? Or is this dangerous to the point of possibly "bricking" the scope? If hacking is thought to be an okay idea, what if repair is needed? Is it possible to reverse the hack before sending in the scope so there's no question about a voided warranty? Or is it better to just forget this whole idea and leave the thing "stock"?
John
It depends on the model. I don't think anyone can touch Rigol on the DS2000 series. MSO or DSO, nothing is going to compete on features, build quality and price. The quality of the 2000 series, internals rivals anything else I can think of. Good engineering, layout and components.
There are, however, some reported firmware "bugs". Without knowing the exact model and options, feature sets, intended uses etc, its hard to know how to make any recommendations. If FFT and math functions are a critical aspect, stay far away from the Rigol and go with Agilent 2000 series, or 3000 if you need MSO. The Agilent units do mathematical processing on dedicated hardware. The Rigols do NOT. The Rigol FFT misses a lot of data. So much so, that I would say its not useful, for anything other than a quick glance, for something very very obvious. The Agilent, on the other hand, has truly excellent math functions and speed. The unit I had didn't miss a beat. Neither of these lower priced options are ideal, so you have to pick and choose your battles.
To sum it up....if you have under $2k USD to spend I would go with a Rigol. If you have $4k USD to spend, i would go with MSO3000x from Agilent. If you have up to $7k to spend I would go with a nice used LeCroy WR or Agilent MSO4000.
All if this is shooting from the hip though...without really knowing what specific things the tools will be used for. There is no ideal all in one solution....yet. When comparing tools, I think the "hacking" aspect should be somewhat ignored. There is always a risk of going that direction, and shouldn't be a benchmark for purchase. Not saying it's not possible or useless, just not the wisest way to make a decision on something. If you can hack a feature into something, it's gravy, but if the tool is inadequate w/o the "hack" that says a lot.
P.S. one truly beneficial of the Rigol DS2000A is the low noise front end and 500uV/div vertical scale. Also it's ability to AC couple inputs at 50 ohm internal termination. If you are needing to do DC PSU measurement, this is the only way to go (for sane money). Obviously you need a proper differential preamplifier and probe setup, but that is par for the course, with any other scope.