I think I just lucked out.
I own 2 Tektronix scopes I love, a TDS784A and a 2465.
They're great, I'm used to them and I can do anything I ever need with them.
BUT, I was looking for a portable scope to bring to class for demos and stuff (I teach hardware-software co-design to 4th year EE students), something to show the students you don't need a very fancy scope most of the time.
Casually browsing Amazon.ca, I realized they stocked a lot of siglent test gear. Then I saw they had the SDS1102X for $330 canadian
($250 real dollars). They indicated 5 remaining.
Now I know this is the 2016 model, mostly superseded by the 1104X-E but DAMN, a nice BIG screen, 50 ohm switchable inputs, intensity and color grading, 100MHz bandwidth is amazing for $250 brand new.
I thought maybe they REALLY want them out because they don't move now that the new ones are in, so I tipped the students on that deal and pondered this for a few days.
And then I bit the bullet and ordered one for myself.
Surprise, when I went back to check the scope on amazon 10 minutes later, the price had shot up to $584 canadian ($444 usd). My order was completed at the lower price.
I received the scope yesterday, and put it through it's pace in the lab with a couple students after class, fellow TEA's in the making who were happy to join in on the unboxing after a beer at the pub.
We were all quite surprised by the boot time of under 10 seconds.
-3dB bandwidth with a 1Vrms signal into 50 ohm was around 170MHz, and the frequency counter was spot-on up to 360MHz (maybe could have gone higher with a stronger signal).
We were doing a side-by-side with an Agilent DSO-X3034 and the Siglent "homage" to the user interface on that scope was quite obvious (they could have chosen much worse). Controls are not snappy as on the DSOX but not sluggish like on modern Tektronix either. It's quite uneven really, the coarse vertical and horizontal controls are super snappy, but cursors are much slower than on my 25 year old Tek.
Scope is dated 2017-10-21, and stickers on the box show it was shipped from Siglent Technologies America to Amazon.com on 2018-01-04, so I guess Amazon is an authorized dealer. It came with latest firmware installed and serial decoders enabled, which I appreciate.
It even does a quite decent FFT, although the controls are a bit weird (but so are the TDS's), the update rate is slow and there is no averaging (was added to later models). Hold-max seems to do the business for me.
I really liked the fact that the graticule has SQUARE divsions, as on my old scopes. All the newer Teks and Agilent with their rectangular divisions make all waveforms look weird to me.
So any of you ever got a deal like that on Amazon and seen the price skyrocket afterwards? I guess I must be thankful to some AI algorithm somewhere...