first time buyers oscilloscope analysis paralysis help!!!!!

[Mr. Scram]

I have experience sending an in-warranty device for repair to Siglent's US based support (Ohio).  It was a relatively standard process: get an RMA, send the device, get repaired device returned. 

I think the days of having a schematic, bill-of-materials and parts-ordering forms right inside the Users Manual of a product are long-gone.  Most companies these days will fix stuff in warranty, offer to fix it for your for a price out of warranty, and that's about it.  Most aren't going to offer selling spare parts; they'd rather have you buy a new unit.

I'd expect in-warranty repairs or replacements to be done as it's the bare minimum. Keysight does offer quite a lot of parts as long as the device is supported and a fair number of years after that through their website and most are priced fairly reasonably unless you need something functionally vital. Fluke also offers parts but is stupidly expensive.

[Mr. Scram]

It's a valid question.  I would like to know the answer myself, as I'm sure others would.

When you know it's going to look bad for the brand you peddle you just accuse people of trolling and conveniently ignore the matter. 

[bd139]

Tautech's gotta eat. We all have. I peddle my shit elsewhere

[tautech]

Tautech's gotta eat. We all have. I peddle my shit elsewhere

Well I don't sell internationally so any sales I might get from members here are just a small part of my business and I'm only here to address the shite that gets slung Siglents way and demonstrate their equipments capabilities and offer support if I can however when some can't engage their grey matter and see many instruments share the same case, handles, feet, front panels, PSU's etc you do gotta wonder what they are smoking or wonder if they need new glasses. 

[Mr. Scram]

Well I don't sell internationally so any sales I might get from members here are just a small part of my business and I'm only here to address the shite that gets slung Siglents way and demonstrate their equipments capabilities and offer support if I can however when some can't engage their grey matter and see many instruments share the same case, handles, feet, front panels, PSU's etc you do gotta wonder what they are smoking or wonder if they need new glasses

Devices sharing parts doesn't seem to be related with the discussion at hand. That's industrial design related and not support related. The question is what support Rigol and Siglent provide other than the legal minimum and how long they will do this. This support is what sets Keysight, Tektronix and other big players apart from companies only interested in pushing equipment out the door and never looking back or providing added value. It would be useful if you could stop being grating and provide us with answers. Though the refusal to be upfront when you usually are very eager to "contribute" suggests the answer isn't in your best interest. This is one of those times a dealer or representative could add value instead of just noise.

[Mr. Scram]

Tautech's gotta eat. We all have. I peddle my shit elsewhere

The problem is that a lot of noise and bias is added to threads typically started by the kind of people most susceptible to it. New visitors don't know the few usual suspects who barf adverts disguised as advice habitually. I'm not saying dealers or representatives can't be useful as some very much are and even tautech sometimes has his moments.

[BillB]

I have experience sending an in-warranty device for repair to Siglent's US based support (Ohio).  It was a relatively standard process: get an RMA, send the device, get repaired device returned. 

I think the days of having a schematic, bill-of-materials and parts-ordering forms right inside the Users Manual of a product are long-gone.  Most companies these days will fix stuff in warranty, offer to fix it for your for a price out of warranty, and that's about it.  Most aren't going to offer selling spare parts; they'd rather have you buy a new unit.

I'd expect in-warranty repairs or replacements to be done as it's the bare minimum. Keysight does offer quite a lot of parts as long as the device is supported and a fair number of years after that through their website and most are priced fairly reasonably unless you need something functionally vital. Fluke also offers parts but is stupidly expensive.

When companies can charge $50K for a piece of professional equipment there is a certain expectation of service life and support.  I'd be pleasantly surprised 10 years from now to be able to buy a knob for Keysight's DSOX1102A.

Plus, with everyone moving to the Everything As A Service Model, your scope will eventually just be a platform through which you rent online scope software.  The platform will be obsoleted out from under you before you have the time to wear out a knob.       

[Mr. Scram]

When companies can charge $50K for a piece of professional equipment there is a certain expectation of service life and support.  I'd be pleasantly surprised 10 years from now to be able to buy a knob for Keysight's DSOX1102A.

Plus, with everyone moving to the Everything As A Service Model, your scope will eventually just be a platform through which you rent online scope software.  The platform will be obsoleted out from under you before you have the time to wear out a knob.     

I'm optimistic you'd be able to order those knobs. Parts for decades old equipment in the same budgetary class are still available. I'm not sure how long the 1000Xs will be current models but I assume they will last a while as they were introduced quite recently.

[Fungus]

Replacement feet for a Rigol DS1054Z are easy to get hold of:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2479741

[SilverSolder]

[...] with everyone moving to the Everything As A Service Model, your scope will eventually just be a platform through which you rent online scope software.  The platform will be obsoleted out from under you before you have the time to wear out a knob.     

I'm worried that the opposite will happen:  once they have you subscribing to everything you thought you owned (probably including your underwear), what incentive do they have to keep developing the product?  The companies that do this might end up like the phone companies of yesteryear...  bloated, unresponsive, couldn't care less.

[tautech]

I have experience sending an in-warranty device for repair to Siglent's US based support (Ohio).  It was a relatively standard process: get an RMA, send the device, get repaired device returned. 

I think the days of having a schematic, bill-of-materials and parts-ordering forms right inside the Users Manual of a product are long-gone.  Most companies these days will fix stuff in warranty, offer to fix it for your for a price out of warranty, and that's about it.  Most aren't going to offer selling spare parts; they'd rather have you buy a new unit.

I'd expect in-warranty repairs or replacements to be done as it's the bare minimum. Keysight does offer quite a lot of parts as long as the device is supported and a fair number of years after that through their website and most are priced fairly reasonably unless you need something functionally vital. Fluke also offers parts but is stupidly expensive.

When companies can charge $50K for a piece of professional equipment there is a certain expectation of service life and support.  I'd be pleasantly surprised 10 years from now to be able to buy a knob for Keysight's DSOX1102A.

Me too. 10 years ago if someone mentioned HP made scopes I'd reply; really ? I thought they made PC's and calculators.
Back then if asked for scope advice I'd have said Tek and if someone mentioned Siglent; WHO ?
Such it is in this ever changing world.

Some brands have had decades to hone their business model and get their equipment right yet still struggle with PSU's that go BOOM or nand rot.

[Mr. Scram]

Me too. 10 years ago if someone mentioned HP made scopes I'd reply; really ? I thought they made PC's and calculators.
Back then if asked for scope advice I'd have said Tek and if someone mentioned Siglent; WHO ?
Such it is in this ever changing world.

Some brands have had decades to hone their business model and get their equipment right yet still struggle with PSU's that go BOOM or nand rot.

The difference is that the serious players acknowledge their mistakes and take steps to correct them. That's also called support. Siglent copied the design and UI so maybe they'll manage to copy the support one day too. Maybe your customers will want to use the oscilloscopes long enough to experience issues like NAND rot. Still no word on the out of warranty parts and repair availability and process?

[njkmonty]

  come across one of these locally    Agilent 54624a ?

[TK]

  come across one of these locally    Agilent 54624a ?

It is a really nice scope.  The A stands for Analog and means it does not have logic analyzer input.  If you can get the 54622D is better (it is a Mixed Storage Oscilloscope with 2+16 channels).  Dave reviewed it in one of his videos.  Is it worth buying it?  Depend on the price you pay.  The 54622D are priced around $250 in the US

[njkmonty]

ok thanks

[tautech]

Me too. 10 years ago if someone mentioned HP made scopes I'd reply; really ? I thought they made PC's and calculators.
Back then if asked for scope advice I'd have said Tek and if someone mentioned Siglent; WHO ?
Such it is in this ever changing world.

Some brands have had decades to hone their business model and get their equipment right yet still struggle with PSU's that go BOOM or nand rot.

The difference is that the serious players acknowledge their mistakes and take steps to correct them. That's also called support. Siglent copied the design and UI so maybe they'll manage to copy the support one day too.

Nothing at all wrong with our support as Siglent back me to the hilt on any matters I approach them on however not all equipment resellers consider support a prerequisite to having a dealership. 

Maybe your customers will want to use the oscilloscopes long enough to experience issues like NAND rot.

All Siglent equipment I have sold is still in operation AFAIK, some 7 years worth including a class set of DSO's that were my first Siglent sale.
Those results give me a confidence in these products that I didn't initially have and that speaks volumes to me as to their reliability.

Still no word on the out of warranty parts and repair availability and process?

I can only speak for myself and have no issue with any parts ever required and I offer an in-house service center.
Most dealers don't/can't offer these services for one reason or another and circumstances will be different for each and every brand worldwide.

You're fishing for an 'issue' that isn't there ! 
(Trolling is a bonafide fishing term)

[bd139]

Tautech's gotta eat. We all have. I peddle my shit elsewhere

The problem is that a lot of noise and bias is added to threads typically started by the kind of people most susceptible to it. New visitors don't know the few usual suspects who barf adverts disguised as advice habitually. I'm not saying dealers or representatives can't be useful as some very much are and even tautech sometimes has his moments.

Tautech has a big chunk of text under his name as does Daniel from Keysight. 

Anyway I just found that Telonic have started selling Siglent stuff so it’s on the table for me now we have a decent distributor here.

[2N3055]

  come across one of these locally    Agilent 54624a ?

It is a really nice scope.  The A stands for Analog and means it does not have logic analyzer input.  If you can get the 54622D is better (it is a Mixed Storage Oscilloscope with 2+16 channels).  Dave reviewed it in one of his videos.  Is it worth buying it?  Depend on the price you pay.  The 54622D are priced around $250 in the US

It was a great scope in the day. It started mixed signal craze..
On the other hand, that scope has maximum real-time sample rate of 200 MS/sec, meaning that it's maximum sample rate is worse than DS1000Z with all four channels on, when DS1000Z is sampling with 250 MS/sec. With all channels sampling it has maximum sample rate of 100 MS/sec and in both cases it doesn't really comply to Nyquist criteria.
To work around that, it does repetitive sampling, and behaves like a classic sampling scope, creating one screen from many repetitive triggers.

That means that if you are looking at stable, clean, repetitive signal (like from a stable clock source, or crystal or such) you will get nice oscillogram of that.
If you want to take a look at nonrepetitive signal (some kind of burst, series of packets on a digital bus) you wont be able to see it. You will see scrambled crap..

Worst part is that if you have some signal that is supposed to be nice, clean and repetitive, but has a problem in it (like optical encoder that produces random glitches in output) you won't see any of that.

So if you want to use that scope for anything less than 30ish MHz (and that includes all harmonic content of the signal) and use it more like an analog scope, it's great. You will be able to get nice single capture of slow signals.

Even crappy little DS1000Z has better triggering, better sample rate (to capture faster events) more memory. And it is bottom of the barrel.

But, hey, to each its own..

OTOH, 54641A/D and 54642A/D are much, much better machines. They are great, if you can get on that works well, and costs right.

[Fungus]

I thought this thread was about providing a "Fluke" experience. In that case there's only really one choice in this price range...

Clue: Out of all the Rigols and Siglents in Dave's lab, what oscilloscope does he choose to use in his latest video?



That's right! Dave's favorite Daily Driver.

[BillB]

I thought this thread was about providing a "Fluke" experience. In that case there's only really one choice in this price range...

   The first post:

Rigol Ds1054z
or
Siglent SDS1202X-E

i really dont think i will need a 4 probe model , however good UI
nice big crisp screen, fast response as possible for that price.

i dont really want to spend much more than the above , and prefer to buy a reputable brand.
is there a different model within these brands that ticks my boxes?
or do all of these scopes have all this extra stuff i probably wont use?

i dont want to buy a second hand analogue

And again the OP with a $350 budget is getting pushed to AAA brand. 

Clue: Out of all the Rigols and Siglents in Dave's lab, what oscilloscope does he choose to use in his latest video?

But according to the logic on this thread Dave shouldn't be using his own 121GW dmm in that video either!  Instead he should be using a Fluke 179 because of the questionable nature of post-warranty parts and support that EEVBLOG offers (or doesn't).  26 years from now if I want to order a replacement LCD screen for my 121GW from the EEVBLOG I might not be able to.   

[Fungus]

I thought this thread was about providing a "Fluke" experience. In that case there's only really one choice in this price range...

   The first post:

Which was superceded by this post:

i previously had a $100 dmm
then after a while i thought bugger it i will save up for a better one,
after doing the same procrastinating fence sitting research i bought a fluke 87v
from that experienced i was amazed just using the continuity tested how nice and fast it was to use.
now i feel i dont need to look again for another dmm.
its not the most expensive available, and i enjoy using it.

Im looking for the equivilent experience now with a scope,   im just trying to find my "FLuke"

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/first-time-buyers-oscilloscope-analysis-paralysis-help!!!!!/msg2678592/#msg2678592

And again the OP with a $350 budget is getting pushed to AAA brand. 

You know I'm the last person to ever do that, normally it's the resident Siglent salesmen.

If the OP really want an upgrade though, the Keysight is the one to aim for. It's not a whole lot more expensive than the Siglent but the UI is massively more productive and it uses a beast of an ASIC that simply refuses to slow down (mostly due to the RAM being inside the ASIC, which is why RAM isn't as large as on other models).

[Fungus]

But according to the logic on this thread Dave shouldn't be using his own 121GW dmm in that video either!

Dave has a monetary interest using blue meters in his videos so it's understandable.

Before that he used yellow meters, no problem.

[SilverSolder]

  come across one of these locally    Agilent 54624a ?

It is a really nice scope.  The A stands for Analog and means it does not have logic analyzer input.  If you can get the 54622D is better (it is a Mixed Storage Oscilloscope with 2+16 channels).  Dave reviewed it in one of his videos.  Is it worth buying it?  Depend on the price you pay.  The 54622D are priced around $250 in the US

It was a great scope in the day. It started mixed signal craze..
On the other hand, that scope has maximum real-time sample rate of 200 MS/sec, meaning that it's maximum sample rate is worse than DS1000Z with all four channels on, when DS1000Z is sampling with 250 MS/sec. With all channels sampling it has maximum sample rate of 100 MS/sec and in both cases it doesn't really comply to Nyquist criteria.
To work around that, it does repetitive sampling, and behaves like a classic sampling scope, creating one screen from many repetitive triggers.

That means that if you are looking at stable, clean, repetitive signal (like from a stable clock source, or crystal or such) you will get nice oscillogram of that.
If you want to take a look at nonrepetitive signal (some kind of burst, series of packets on a digital bus) you wont be able to see it. You will see scrambled crap..

Worst part is that if you have some signal that is supposed to be nice, clean and repetitive, but has a problem in it (like optical encoder that produces random glitches in output) you won't see any of that.

So if you want to use that scope for anything less than 30ish MHz (and that includes all harmonic content of the signal) and use it more like an analog scope, it's great. You will be able to get nice single capture of slow signals.

Even crappy little DS1000Z has better triggering, better sample rate (to capture faster events) more memory. And it is bottom of the barrel.

But, hey, to each its own..

OTOH, 54641A/D and 54642A/D are much, much better machines. They are great, if you can get on that works well, and costs right.

For business use, I would probably choose a modern scope from a higher end manufacturer and be done with it, writing it off as a business investment/expense.

For home/hobby use, I ended up with a 54622D...   I agree that >50MHz is not really in its wheelhouse, but for anything else it is actually rather good:  2 analog, 16 digital channels; starts/boots in a few seconds; responds instantly to any keypress/menu item - after all, it is using an early version of the HP MegaZoom ASIC,  same principle as the current scopes from Keysight.

The screen is high resolution, still better than most LCD scopes, and you can see it from across the room, in daylight...  Menus are fairly shallow and fast to use.  Built in help function wherever you are.  You can store signals as screenshots or spreadsheet format (on floppy...  gotta love retro).  It connects to GPIB (option) and rs232 (standard).  Basically, it has most of the features of a modern scope, including math functions like integration and differentiation, FFT, measuring phase and delay between two channels etc.,  packaged in a really retro looking unit. 

The single shot mode runs at a sample rate of 200MSa/s for a single channel, it is definitely not blind to random events.

You can do a heck of a lot worse for your $250 than one of these...   

[BillB]

Which was superceded by this post:

Including the last line:

is the keysight worth aiming for ?  or am i just entering the endless staircase of upsales?

I think this forum might be doing this OP hobbyist a disservice by leading him by the hand up that staircase.  For a hobbyist, I guess I just don't consider a 90% bump ($349 to $670) the same price range.

Dave has a monetary interest using blue meters in his videos so it's understandable.
Before that he used yellow meters, no problem.

That's fine.  As long as Dave doesn't actually expect anyone to buy one because everyone should be saving up to buy a Fluke 179 (of course, only if they can't wait longer to save up to buy a Fluke 287.)

[dcbrown73]

I've have decided that asking for scope advise on this forum isn't very helpful lol.   Too much hyperbole to wade through before you can filter out what actually is true and what isn't.

From what I can tell, there is no "great, starter scope"  They all have their warts and blemishes.  Actually, even that statement is hyperbole.  I have a DS1104Z and it has done everything I've asked of it thus far.   Since I'm relatively new to their use (maybe 2 years) it has been a fine starter scope and I have nothing bad to say about it. 

Now, if my profession was as an EE.  I might sing a different song, but then again.  We are talking about starter scopes here, not professional scopes and I'm not an EE. 

The one thing I've gathered here is Rigol, Siglent, GW-Instek, and Keysight all make starter scopes worthy of a beginner's first scope. 

My opinion?  Look at them and pick the one that fits your needs and be done with it.  If you start getting way more serious and need a more powerful scope.  Then sell your starter scope and go buy a better one.  Or keep it and still go buy a better one!