Any working scope is better than nothing.
Many, many businesses buy Siglents and Rigols. They buy 10 Siglent SDS1104X-E and one Keysight 1GHz 3000 , 4000 or 6000 series... Or they rent high end scopes and only buy lesser ones. Because they can do 80-90% of daily chores.
It is same thing as a bookkeeper person making a living on a i3 computer with 4 GB RAM, while spoiled 15 year old brats are demanding i9 12000 USD computers because their latest games don't have enough FPS... It's the hobbyists that are inventing problems where there aren't any. In business it's simple. It either works or it doesn't. Nobody in their right mind wants to spend more money when less will do the job.
It's the hobbyists that can afford (if they are wealthy enough) to be snobbish about brands, or "user experience". In real life companies, you come to work, boss hands you the toolbox and tells you "there is a problem there.. Go fix it and let me know when you're done." If they have to choose between 10 adequate scopes so every engineer has one, or 3 excellent scopes that engineers will have to wait in line to use, guess what's the answer... Only largest companies have premium instruments, all others economize about that...
As I said, to each its own, tool for the job.
Everybody like bashing Chinese scopes. But if you went to Keysight, until few years ago, and you asked them what would they suggest as excellent fully featured ENTRY level scope they would tell you that is exactly why they made 3000 series. They consider 3000 series to be higher low end, advanced entry level scope. That is their marketing strategy.2000 series was deliberately crippled and really basic.
Until Rigol and Siglent came out with their offering, there weren't real entry level scopes. Not really. It was noname toys, or severely crippled name scopes but still sold for several thousands of USD. And it was practically duopoly, HP, Tek and some Hamegs (R&S wasn't big player until few years ago), some LeCroys (no entry level models either to speak of). Maybe Yokogawa here and there. And they all cost too much. There were no Renaults, Fiats, Dacias of scopes. Only Mercedes and Porsche with their very expensive and their slightly less expensive cars the they called "economy", but they were still 5x times more expensive that Fiat with same basic specs. Fiat didn't have leather seats and fancy upholstery. But it drove millions of people to work, to vacation and changed their lives for the better. This is the market that Rigol and Siglent are targeting.
Let's get back to the topic.
It is actually simple:
- You decide how much money you can spend. That includes both "I have this much cash in my hand", or if you plan to get a loan to finance this purchase. Fix the hard sum that you are willing to pay.
- Take a piece of paper and write down what projects you plan to work on.That defines what signals you will encounter.
- On scope you need various triggers so you can catch what you looking for. For noisy analog signal find scope that has good trigger stability. If you look at digital signals, look for specialized triggers to look for crap on digital signals..
- On scope you need enough analog bandwidth so that your signal reaches A/D converter with least amount of distortion. If you look at digital signals, find out what edge rise times you will encounter and search for scopes by criteria which scope has fast enough rise time, not the frequency of signal.
- On scope you need sampling speed that is adequate for analog bandwidth it has. Keysight recommends 5x analog bandwidth to make sure no aliasing happens. Sometimes you can be OK with less than that.
- If you capture long sequences but need to keep high frequency data in that capture, longer the memory the better.
- If you want to correlate lots of signals at the same time you need enough channels. Some people will be fine with 2 (for instance: general troubleshooting, servicing) some will want 8 (for instance: power analysis)..
- If you want to correlate analog and digital you need mixed signal capability. Make sure digital channels are fast enough for digital signal you're looking at.
- If you want to decode some protocols, make sure they are supported.
- If you plan to decode a lot, plan to either get separate logic analyser/decoder. Decoding thousands of messages is job for 24" screen and PC. Decoding on scopes is nice as a quick view for troubleshooting, and really useful because you already have it all connected and you only enable decoding..
- Buy scope for those specific purposes and no more. Don't think "I will give more money but will buy once and have it all, now and 20 years from now on". You will pay too much for stuff you will never use. Buy for today and spend as little as you can and save money to buy scope with more features later if you will need it.
- With money you have, buy scope that fulfills most of your list. If there are compromises to be made, you have to decide what is more important. Do you want bigger touch screen or more sensitive input channels (500uV/div as opposed to 4mV/DIV), can it be PC USB scope with huge 512 MS memory and lots of decodes, or you want "real"scope with buttons, very fast U/I and would be happy with only 1MS of memory.
- You will NOT find SINGLE scope that does ALL you want(need). Not for any money. I have four of them, each one bought for specific capability/purpose. All of them were bought separately, when there was a project that required that capability and not a moment sooner. Project paid for them and I moved on and kept the equipment. If I realize I didn't use something for a year, I make a note of it, and if it really doesn't get used, off it goes.. I can buy something else with that dead money...
Pay attention I didn't mention any brands. Choice of that will change daily.
I have an eclectic mix of Rigol, Siglent, Keysight, Picoscope, Hameg, SignalHound, Micsig, Zeroplus, Maynuo, Brymen, Metrix,Fluke , Genrad, UNI-T, etc..
Like our friend BD139 epicly said, "run your shit Ferengy style" :-)
Dump your money into projects, not fancy instruments that will be not used. Or buy beer and steak, that is awesome too..
Or just admit, "Oh no, I don't do electronics, mind you.. I simply collect fancy instruments. I like how they glow...". That's fine too.