GDS-2000A series New economic oscilloscope by GW Instek comes to market

[Hydrawerk]

GDS2000A has advanced XY cursors, but I don't understand it.

[snoopy]

Hello, what do you think about the new GDS-2000A series? GW Instek web here. You can download manual or specification there. It seems to be a serious competitor for Rigol DS2000 series. The price for GDS-2000A is quite the same. 100 MHz, 2-channels  GDS-2102A is sold for $1,143 at Testequity.
Please do not confuse the GDS-2000 with GDS-2000A, they are totally different. See attached pictures. Yes, I do not know, why they chose the GDS-2000A name...
And features, as specified by the manufacturer.
*300MHz/200MHz/100MHz/70MHz Bandwidth ,2 or 4 Input Channel
*2GSa/s Real-time Sampling Rate and 100GSa/s Equivalent Time Sampling Rate
*2MegaPoints Record Length (When using one channel, probably...)
*1mV /div to 10V/div of Vertical Range
*1ns/div to 100s/div of Time Base Range
*80,000 wfm/s of Waveform Update Rate (I wish it was true...)
*8 inch 800*600 High Resolution TFT LCD Display (Very good!)
*Built-in Segmented Memory and Waveform Search Functions to Optimize the Efficiency of Record Length
*Zoom Window and Play/Pause can Rapidly Navigate the Waveforms
*36 Automatic Measurement Functions Offers Various Measurement Selections
*Optional 8 or 16 digital channel with Logic analyzer(MSO)
*Optional Function Generator (but probably only to 3 MHz)
*Flexible Remote Control Connectivity(Standard:USB ;Option:LAN/GPIB)

Finally, it has a better XY mode than Rigols... It has cursors in XY mode.
Update:
Photos and screenshots here. Please note that I was not an experienced user of this scope, when I took the pictures.  https://plus.google.com/photos/106264218831814439783/albums/5857196858625060337

Dave's video

I just saw daves video  What an anticlimax !!

However lets give the crew at GW a chance to address and hopefully fix the issues before everyone bags the crap out of it 

As it stands the Rigol 2000 series runs rings around it IMO !!

regards

[roli_bark]

XY mode is handy when viewing phase information or any 2 waveform with xy relationship. One application is in AB encoders where you get sin cosine outputs, If your xy plot is an oval you know the read head is not positioned right.

Agree, and more over:
If you want a MEASURED frequency/phase shift info in XY mode between 2 sinusoids, it would be nice to have the exact ellipse [deviation from an ideal circle), or ellipse-rotation rate.

[egonotto]

Hi Hydrawerk,

"GDS2000A has advanced XY cursors, but I don't understand it"

The cursors shows the coordinates in cartesian and polar form and the product and the quotient.
As example you can use it to calculate phase or modulation factor.
 
Best Regards
egonotto

[Hydrawerk]

Thanks for teardown, Dave.

[Hydrawerk]

Well, there are those weird things on the function generator PCB. Someone apparently forgot to draw a route on the PCB. Well, i didn't see this inside Rigol or Agilent scopes. 
EDIT: OK, the "?" marked thing on GDS-2000A FGN01.png is just a glue.

[EEVblog]

Well, there are those weird things on the function generator PCB. Someone apparently forgot to draw a route on the PCB. Well, i didn't see this inside Rigol or Agilent scopes. 

That's just some left over hot snot.

[Hydrawerk]

No shielding over the switched power supply? Oh, Rigol and Agilent have shielding. Folks, this GDS-2000A looks overall designed to be as cheap as possible... (Even no pushable knobs...)

[grego]

No shielding over the switched power supply? Oh, Rigol and Agilent have shielding. Folks, this GDS-2000A looks overall designed to be as cheap as possible... (Even no pushable knobs...)

Seriously?  Man, you have had a hard-on for being negative on this thing since you bought a 2002.  Did you listen to Dave's commentary during the teardown?  From a build quality standpoint it's all top-notch components throughout with top-notch build quality?  Set aside any software issues for a moment and the quality of the build is fantastic.  I'm sure there were some design/cost decisions (I'm curious about the lack of a FPGA to drive the display and such as well) but you can not complain about their choice of circuitry from the passives through the ICs.

[Hydrawerk]

Well, no problem. Although the hardware is maybe not as modern as it could be, I expect that this scope will last long. It looked quite good at the trade fair where I took pictures. It's quite feature rich.
At my student's lab at university we have two 60MHz GDS-806C from year 2004 or so. They are not much modern, they have only 100MSa/s ADCs. But they are still going strong, no problems with buttons, knobs or PSU.
And note that the logic analyzer of your GDS-2000A is probably good and Rigol has nothing like it yet.
Tek DPO2000 has probably also unshielded PSU. https://plus.google.com/photos/104378593109746079667/albums/5860030731124964769?banner=pwa&authkey=CIH3roH_-ImCcw Maybe it's not a big disadvantage.

[Electro Fan]

And note that the logic analyzer of your GDS-2000A is probably good and Rigol has nothing like it yet.

Yeah, where is the Rigol 2000 Logic Analyzer?
And the Rigol 4000 Logic Analyzer?

How and when do we get those?   

[EEVblog]

Yeah, where is the Rigol 2000 Logic Analyzer?
And the Rigol 4000 Logic Analyzer?
How and when do we get those?   

I thought someone mentioned on here it's in the pipeline?

[dr.diesel]

I thought someone mentioned on here it's in the pipeline?

They are, I talked specifically with Rigol about this at the Dayton Hamvention.  A "couple months" was the timeline mentioned.

[EEVblog]

They are, I talked specifically with Rigol about this at the Dayton Hamvention.  A "couple months" was the timeline mentioned.

Is that for the 2000 series?

[dr.diesel]

They are, I talked specifically with Rigol about this at the Dayton Hamvention.  A "couple months" was the timeline mentioned.

Is that for the 2000 series?

I was specifically asking about the 4000, I believe someone else commented about the 2000 MSO.  I have the engineers card, I could ask them if anyone is interested?

[grego]

I got a note back from InstekUSA today - they escalated to engineering in Taiwan and we should be seeing some responses from them on this forum in the near future.

I wanted to thank you for informing me about David Jones video on the GDS-2304A. Hopefully we will receive a more favorable review once he has used the machine for a few weeks.
 
Our team in Taiwan has looked into your question over the EE blog, and will be responding shortly.

They also released firmware 1.15 with a few minor fixes.

[marmad]

I got a note back from InstekUSA today - they escalated to engineering in Taiwan and we should be seeing some responses from them on this forum in the near future.

I wanted to thank you for informing me about David Jones video on the GDS-2304A. Hopefully we will receive a more favorable review once he has used the machine for a few weeks.
 
Our team in Taiwan has looked into your question over the EE blog, and will be responding shortly.

Thanks for the info, Greg - although I don't know how much GW-Instek is going to reveal about their actual design techniques (possible overclocking, etc). But there are a couple of questions which are just specification clarifications which are missing from their data sheets - which it seems that they could just answer immediately:

Color depth of LCD (it appears to be 256 maximum).
Levels of intensity grading (Likely 16; 32 maximum given 4 channels and 8-bit color-depth).

[grego]

I think they are going to be commenting on the color-grading issue (since I brought that up in my email) among other things.  I specifically asked about that and the stuttering Dave saw at times.  I also pointed them at the video itself and both this thread and the one about the specific episode and begged to get an engineering to watch and respond.

I agree I don't think they will discuss specific details on construction but hopefully the software-related ones we can get some feedback.

[marmad]

I think they are going to be commenting on the color-grading issue (since I brought that up in my email) among other things.  I specifically asked about that and the stuttering Dave saw at times.  I also pointed them at the video itself and both this thread and the one about the specific episode and begged to get an engineering to watch and respond.

I agree I don't think they will discuss specific details on construction but hopefully the software-related ones we can get some feedback.

Just as a follow-up, I think it's reasonably clear what they've done in terms of design and FW. I think it's clever - in terms of keeping costs down for a 4-channel scope (look at the upcoming Rigol 4-channel response: smaller screen, single 2GSa/s split between all 4-channels, etc) - trade-offs have to be made for those price levels. But I do think it makes the DS2000 a better choice for 2-channels (unless you need MSO capabilities).

[Hydrawerk]

Well, nobody still has found out what's the GW Instek's logic analyzer like. It might be better than in my DSOX2002A (not enabled by code yet.) At least the GW will have longer memory, I think.

[Hydrawerk]

Just for comparison I found a few pictures of intensity grading of Tek DPO2000. The LCD has funnily small resolution, but the DPO feature is OK, as it should be.

[Hydrawerk]

Well, there is only one oscilloscope with true dual function generator.

[EEVblog]

Well, there is only one oscilloscope with true dual function generator.

Interestingly, the 2000X and 3000X of course have the same capability built in, but it's only on the demo outputs signals.
I've always wondered if you could somehow dump an ARB waveform into the 2nd channel by remote and somehow get it out the demo connector....
They obviously do this in the firmware when using 2 demo outputs to generate signals.

[Hydrawerk]

So all the demo signals come from the MegaZoom IV ASIC? Interesting...

[mike1305]

Well, nobody still has found out what's the GW Instek's logic analyzer like. It might be better than in my DSOX2002A (not enabled by code yet.) At least the GW will have longer memory, I think.

We've played with it a bit here. A boon is that it comes with a few serial decode abilities for free with the analyzer. So that's pretty cool. An unfortunate limitation is that you can't decode serial buses using analog channels. To see analog channels and decode you have to double probe the signal, which of course doubles the loading effects on the DUT. Big bummer there.

We are working on FW 1.14 and waiting for 1.15 as we speak so perhaps that changed?