Keysight DSO4024 vs Tektronix MDO3 - 200 MHz bandwidth vs Teledyne lecroy 3024Z

[jake111]

But Tektronix is not only one with more memory than Keysight. There is number of R&S, LeCroy, Siglent, Rigol, Picoscope(USB scopes) etc..
And most of them are working better than Tek at most things.

But.... If you have bunch of active probes for Tek ecosystem, then Tek might be the choice...

I have to agree. Going by the experience of others on this forum the Tek MDO3000 / MDO4000 scopes are not that good when it comes to actually using the deep memory for math and decoding. Makes me sad though because Tektronix has made so much nice equipment in the past. I really liked the elegant designs (the electronics) of the Tek 2230 and TDS500/TDS700 series oscilloscopes.

You need to use a 4000 series scope.  For decoding, I don't get what the point is, if you need deep memory decoding you need a logic/protocol analyzer with that capability.  It has always been a separate tool and I believe it always should be, connected to a PC.  The decoding capabilities of the scope are for reference along side analog data and for triggering, IMO, not deep capture and analysis of bus data.  The deep memory ability of the higher end scopes are for one shot failures in the time domain that are very difficult or very costly (your soldering time, or only one sample available, etc).

And it's not about happening to have Tek active probes in the lab, its about availability of those probes.  All of the agilent active probes I have used were unimpressive and hard to get, with the exception of very high frequency probes (like 4GHz for high speed bus cert and analysis) which is on a different class of machine and not really relevant to this discussion.  I suspect Agilent dominates in that area but really don't have enough data points to say.

[Wuerstchenhund]

I am back to school now but worked for a semiconductor company in the power electronics group.  None of the senior guys would use Agilent due to probe selection.  They all insisted on Tektronix DPO/MSO4000 series with those TDP series probes for their work.

Interesting. I have several large clients working with power electronics, and the majority of scopes there are LeCroy and Keysight, mostly Keysight Infiniium-S and LeCroy HDO600/8000 WavePro HD scopes, which all are HD scopes (10bit/12bit resolution) which is a big bonus. They wouldn't touch a 8bit scope with a slow architecture like the MDO4k with a barge pole.

Amazing probes and I will admit the scopes were wonderful though out of the price range for someone comparing it to that cost reduced DPO/MDO3000 series or anything Agilent.  The ability to capture at maximum sample depth (I recall 20Mpts per channel) at any horizontal setting on the Tek was extremely useful for some things (i.e. you can capture and then literally zoom to infinity and beyond with amazing clarity) and my Agilent DSO-X 3000 does not seem to support this at all which sucks.  I see in the Agilent documentation that they seem to put down the Tek behavior by claiming that this huge capture depth slows the scope down, and therefore update rate down, which it certainly does, however you have complete control over it at least on the Tek 4000 series and when I worked there the guy who always had the Eureka! moment solving a huge ongoing problem was always using a Tek if it was power related.

Not sure what your point is other than that you clearly bought the wrong scope with the DSO-X. If you'd done a minimum on research before buying then it should have been pretty clear right from the start that the DSO-X3k, like all InfiniVision scopes, has been designed with a very strong focus on very high waveform rates and therefore manages sample memory automatically only. This was by purpose as the InfiniVision (note the word "vision" in the name!) was always aimed at people coming from analog scopes and those that mostly work visually with a scope. And they value high update rates because it reduces the unavoidable blind time of your scope.

The method to capture a certain period in time and then zoom in on the details is a common and effective strategy, and can be done with most (all?) newer scopes on the market down to the <$400 Rigol DS1054z.

The funny thing that even your DSO-X3k can do that, either for the last acquisition in continuous mode (i.e. after pressing STOP) or in Single acquisition mode, where it uses the full available memory. So even if the DSO-X is somewhat limited due to its automatic memory handling (and the lack of user feedback on available memory), it could still used for your scenario when used properly, as long as the period you want to capture fits inside the 4M memory.

Of course, part of being an engineer is knowing one's tools, so there's that element, too.

Besides, and just to put this into context, Keysight wants some $5k for a 200MHz DSOX3024T and $15k for the 1GHz DSOX3104T. The 200Mhz MDO4024C starts at some $7.5k (i.e. roughly 1.5x as much as the DSOX3024T), and the 1GHz MDO4104C lists for >$18k (still some 17% more expensive). So there's quite a price difference here.

For high speed digital stuff, I saw lots of Agilent and they may dominate here, I really don't know but if you are doing constant current drivers for LED consider what probes you might want and take that into account.  As an example Tek TDP1000 probes look to be under $1500 used and for a probe with 42V common mode range and 100V damage threshold, yet 1GHz BW and such small parasitics, I don't know what Agilent has to compete but I sure can't find it on eBay for a good price if it's there.

I addressed this in more detail another thread but the short version is that there are plenty of inexpensive probes for other brand's scopes on the market, often even a lot cheaper than $1500.

However, the 2nd hand value of more or less worn out probes should really not be used as a guideline for buying a new scope for professional use.

Besides, cheap probes can't compensate for a lackluster scope.

A chain is only as good as its weakest link.

[jake111]

See you are still basking the Tek without really providing any real reasons why they are "inferior".  Do you work for Keysight? 

I bought the DSO-X because it was really cheap at the time.  And while I know that the agilent probes suffer wear (with all the removing and reinstalling of attenuator hats, etc), most of the Tek probes at my previous employer were approaching 10 years old and still what I would consider "good as new" and passing cal every year. 

I really think it comes down to preference, everyone cares about different things, but in the end one doesn't really outperform the other unless we are talking about cheap econoscopes like my DSO-X 3000 or anything that companies put a "3000" on.  For that matter, even these china brand (Rigol, Siglent) in the "5000" range still look like econoscopes, I think this must be marketing.

I'll take a 20 year old RS6 over a brand new S6 any day and the RS6 is way cheaper due to its age.  The 20 year old RS6 may have less "features" and take a little more education to use effectively but the quality and longevity is superior in every way.  They don't make them like they used to.  I strongly suspect this translates to scopes too.  Everything is cost reduced nowadays, the investors want their money no matter what the market looks like and engineer's aren't allowed to obsess over making a truly excellent design anymore.  The project schedule is predetermined and the product is released on time and on budget whether it's ready or not.

[nctnico]

But Tektronix is not only one with more memory than Keysight. There is number of R&S, LeCroy, Siglent, Rigol, Picoscope(USB scopes) etc..
And most of them are working better than Tek at most things.

But.... If you have bunch of active probes for Tek ecosystem, then Tek might be the choice...

I have to agree. Going by the experience of others on this forum the Tek MDO3000 / MDO4000 scopes are not that good when it comes to actually using the deep memory for math and decoding. Makes me sad though because Tektronix has made so much nice equipment in the past. I really liked the elegant designs (the electronics) of the Tek 2230 and TDS500/TDS700 series oscilloscopes.

For decoding, I don't get what the point is, if you need deep memory decoding you need a logic/protocol analyzer with that capability.

This is very bad (deadly) advice. Decoding is typically used when you also need to look at the signals in the analog domain. In most cases a problem with a protocol is happening in the analog world. Two examples:

1) A third party was developing a gadget for one of my customers but he got stuck with getting the interface going. After 2 or 3 weeks and some finger pointing I went over to see what the problem was. It turned out the engineer was using digital inputs to check the protocol on his oscilloscope. After I hooked up the signals to the analog channels the problem was clearly on the screen in 30s.

2) I had to hunt down a problem which occured about once every hour. For this I used segmented recording to record the interaction between a microcontroller and I2C device. I just let the system run with the oscilloscope on circular segmented recording and stop it when the problem had occured. After some analysis on the PC (save decoded messages to CSV format) I could figure out which segment to look at and lo & behold there was an I2C problem. Finding the cause of the problem using a logic analyser would have taken way more time.

In both cases having decoding on the oscilloscope was a major time saver. Also protocol decoding can show values in realtime which is very handy for a quick check of an ADC or DAC. Sure you can make-do with other tools but you end up wasting a lot of time especially when hunting down an intermittant problem. The key to solving problems quickly is to get as much detail (=deepest memory) as you can in one go. I don't want to peel an onion layer by layer; I want to cut it in half and see what is inside.

Beyond that you typically can do protocol analysis/debugging much easier at a higher level (let the devices output a log with the messages they receive in readable form) compared to using a logic analyser. If I had to choose between protocol decoding on an oscilloscope or a logic analyser I definitely choose protocol decoding on an oscilloscope.

[jake111]

But Tektronix is not only one with more memory than Keysight. There is number of R&S, LeCroy, Siglent, Rigol, Picoscope(USB scopes) etc..
And most of them are working better than Tek at most things.

But.... If you have bunch of active probes for Tek ecosystem, then Tek might be the choice...

I have to agree. Going by the experience of others on this forum the Tek MDO3000 / MDO4000 scopes are not that good when it comes to actually using the deep memory for math and decoding. Makes me sad though because Tektronix has made so much nice equipment in the past. I really liked the elegant designs (the electronics) of the Tek 2230 and TDS500/TDS700 series oscilloscopes.

For decoding, I don't get what the point is, if you need deep memory decoding you need a logic/protocol analyzer with that capability.

This is very bad (deadly) advice. Decoding is typically used when you also need to look at the signals in the analog domain. In most cases a problem with a protocol is happening in the analog world. Two examples:

1) A third party was developing a gadget for one of my customers but he got stuck with getting the interface going. After 2 or 3 weeks and some finger pointing I went over to see what the problem was. It turned out the engineer was using digital inputs to check the protocol on his oscilloscope. After I hooked up the signals to the analog channels the problem was clearly on the screen in 30s.

2) I had to hunt down a problem which occured about once every hour. For this I used segmented recording to record the interaction between a microcontroller and I2C device. I just let the system run with the oscilloscope on circular segmented recording and stop it when the problem had occured. After some analysis on the PC (save decoded messages to CSV format) I could figure out which segment to look at and lo & behold there was an I2C problem. Finding the cause of the problem using a logic analyser would have taken way more time.

In both cases having decoding on the oscilloscope was a major time saver. Also protocol decoding can show values in realtime which is very handy for a quick check of an ADC or DAC. Sure you can make-do with other tools but you end up wasting a lot of time especially when hunting down an intermittant problem. The key to solving problems quickly is to get as much detail (=deepest memory) as you can in one go. I don't want to peel an onion layer by layer; I want to cut it in half and see what is inside.

Beyond that you typically can do protocol analysis/debugging much easier at a higher level (let the devices output a log with the messages they receive in readable form) compared to using a logic analyser.

No - Nothing deadly here, you misunderstand.  What you are saying here is just reiterating/restating my point, maybe it's not clear to you.  If you want deep memory capture/decoding because you are analyzing or reverse engineering some communication, i.e. "looking at bus data" as I said, you really should be using the separate logic analyzer, IMHO the scope is totally useless for this due to very limited capture memory - You won't be grabbing some bitstream to an FPGA for analysis with this.  As I said, the scope protocol decodes are for triggering and looking at the data when you need it in parallel with analog to find problems with the bus, in this case you aren't concerned with capturing the specific data you are interested in troubleshooting a problem that lies in the analog domain.  Now consider that with the advent of analyzers like the saleae which do digital and analog in parallel at very high sample rates, and eliminate the need for this middle step of importing to PC in some format and viewing that way, it really starts to make a lot less sense to use the scope and more sense to use the dedicated analyzer in many cases, especially given the many options for automatic recording and triggering, and massive (or even infinite within reason!) storage capabilities of the PC based analyzer.

The scope is optimized for short, high precision captures with respect to almost any legitimate logic analyzer (not talking about toys like the bus pirate here).  I have seen guys try to capture large amounts of bus data with a scope based logic analyzer - It can be entertaining to watch as they either try to capture it in segments and assemble these later on the PC side, or try to creatively reduce sample rate to minimum and carefully trigger to try and grab "most" of it, etc.

[Wuerstchenhund]

See you are still basking the Tek without really providing any real reasons why they are "inferior".

Where should I start? Painfully slow, outdated architecture, horrible UI, locks up when doing demanding stuff, overpriced for what it is, one of the worst support departments in the T&M industry, shall I go on?

Do you work for Keysight? 

No, I just happen to see more test equipment than most people. A lot more. 

I bought the DSO-X because it was really cheap at the time.  And while I know that the agilent probes suffer wear (with all the removing and reinstalling of attenuator hats, etc), most of the Tek probes at my previous employer were approaching 10 years old and still what I would consider "good as new" and passing cal every year. 

All probes suffer wear. Some less some more, also dependent on how careful individual users are. Tek is no better or worse in this regard than any other manufacturer.

I really think it comes down to preference, everyone cares about different things, but in the end one doesn't really outperform the other unless we are talking about cheap econoscopes like my DSO-X 3000 or anything that companies put a "3000" on.  For that matter, even these china brand (Rigol, Siglent) in the "5000" range still look like econoscopes, I think this must be marketing.

You may call it preference, but a lot is down understanding the facts and properties of individual pieces of equipment, and how that applies to your specific requirements. And yes, if all you do to use a scope for is looking at the screen and counting graticules then the difference between the various offerings may indeed not be relevant to you.

Once you start using a scope as a serious debugging tool then even small differences become pretty pronounced.

I'll take a 20 year old RS6 over a brand new S6 any day and the RS6 is way cheaper due to its age.  The 20 year old RS6 may have less "features" and take a little more education to use effectively but the quality and longevity is superior in every way.  They don't make them like they used to.  I strongly suspect this translates to scopes too.  Everything is cost reduced nowadays, the investors want their money no matter what the market looks like and engineer's aren't allowed to obsess over making a truly excellent design anymore.  The project schedule is predetermined and the product is released on time and on budget whether it's ready or not.

Like in most other cases, car analogies are misplaced, too (and it's the wrong place talking about the sins in the design of older Audis, of which there are many).

I can't confirm that the quality has gone down. Technology has progressed dramatically, which has made costs come down. There never was a time where we had better scopes than today, going up all the way to 110GHz bandwidth, with powerful analysis tools and tons of memory. Gone are mechanical switches which eventually fail, or the need for regular manual re-adjustment.

Chances are good that even a cheap Rigol DS1054z will have a much longer service life than most of the scopes of yesteryear.

[jake111]

See you are [..................]ost of the scopes of yesteryear.

You are making broad claims about the Tek's interface and your supposed experience.  I'm not buying it.  You're just one of those guys who has strong opinions based on the confines of your experience and that is totally fine.  Just don't misdirect people with your personal biases.

I looked at your equipment list in your profile and if that's all you have then you should give more details on where your experience comes from along with your strong opinions because your collection is rather, err, basic.... No offense intended.  Just don't buy the experience claims with what you are saying about Teks, it makes no sense.  The DPO/MSO4000's at previous employer had zero lag, amazing screens, excellent user interface which IMO was easier to navigate than the comparable Agilents, to me it's almost like you're coming from a parallel universe

[KE5FX]

You could both be right.  The MDO4000 might be a really nice scope.  I don't know, I haven't used one.  But I do know that Tek has shipped some good scopes as well as some really terrible ones in the not-too-distant past.  There are downsides to doing that.  Over time, poor user experiences turn into prejudice, and prejudice turns into conventional wisdom.

Tektronix benefited from that phenomenon for decades, after HP tried to sell some clunkers back in the 1970s.  So they can't be too surprised if customers are reluctant to jump back on board after they start selling good hardware again.

[james_s]

Tek was at one time way, way ahead, but I think they have a hard time really standing out these days.

I still love the Tek user interface though, probably largely because it's what I'm familiar and proficient with. If they sold an updated TDS3000 series with similar performance but deeper memory and some modern features like serial protocol decoding at a price competitive with other lower-mid range instruments I'd be interested. They've been milking that design for what, 25 years now? A brand new TDS3054C can still be purchased, for something like $22k. No way I could justify paying that.

[tautech]

See you are [..................]ost of the scopes of yesteryear.

You are making broad claims about the Tek's interface and your supposed experience.  I'm not buying it.  You're just one of those guys who has strong opinions based on the confines of your experience and that is totally fine.  Just don't misdirect people with your personal biases.

You greatly underestimate the vast experience of whom you're dealing with here !

I looked at your equipment list in your profile and if that's all you have then you should give more details on where your experience comes from along with your strong opinions because your collection is rather, err, basic.... No offense intended.  Just don't buy the experience claims with what you are saying about Teks, it makes no sense.  The DPO/MSO4000's at previous employer had zero lag, amazing screens, excellent user interface which IMO was easier to navigate than the comparable Agilents, to me it's almost like you're coming from a parallel universe

Certainly a larger universe than yours.

Threads like these get passionate depending on experiences and POV however the specs of a piece of equipment and a users ability to use it to its capability always wins the day. We can go round and round about certain ways things should be done but the truth is modern equipment is very capable (even a $500 DSO) yet not all brands do the same thing the same way nor they need to.

I grew up in a time when Tek ruled the roost and have owned a few of their Asian manufactured models over the years that now pale in comparison to models made by other Asian brands of today.
To fully understand the capabilities of the modern DSO we need study the architecture of their designs to see what use case they're optimized for, be it to mimic a CRO's capabilities or maximise the capabilities or a DSO. Each has their advantages and each offer tools to allow crossover and mimic what the other is better at.

Understanding the tool set of your instrument is paramount to getting the best from it. One users use case will be for the least amount of button pressing while another the flexibility to get the best overall capability yet not suffer from too much dead time.

ymmv

[tmbinc]

I've used a Tek DPO4034 for a long time, eventually switched to a Tek DPO5034 ~7 years ago for which I paid ~$5000 back then. I'd consider it as a mid-end scope. I've also used a number of low-end scopes (the usual sub-$500 Siglent, Rigol scopes, and years ago even a TDS2xx etc.). Unfortunately I don't have a lot of experience on Agilent scopes.

Of course what you need strongly depends on what you're doing with it. I love long sample depth for automated captures (I've been doing DPA - differential power analysis - which requires sometimes million of captures, and segmented capture with 120M sample depth, a fast CPU that can write data at almost Gigabit speed to a network drive is super helpful in improving the acquisition time by an order of magnitude over what other scopes give you). I love "complex" measurements with statistics ("what's the latency standard deviation from this input signal to that output signal" etc. type). I use protocol triggers,  protocol decoders for interactive debugging. I've used a scope to trigger on, and capture, a wide bandwidth RF signal (using a mixer) to debug a wideband artifact of a Wifi radio that happened every x thousand packets, and was hard to catch with a standard spectrum analyzer.

I don't do much analog stuff, but occasionally I need to check if a power supply rail is noisy or not.

In theory, the "cheap scopes" can do all of this as well. They are useful for interactive debugging (probe this testpoint, display some I2C transfers...), but you relatively quickly run into limitations of their protocol decoders or trigger logic (even though they do digital triggers, which in theory should be way more flexible). You can use them for automatic captures, but very quickly curse at them because they either crash every 10k transfers, or are just veeeery slow, or a combination of both. They can do measurements, but then miss exactly that type of measurements you just need. But of course they are a fraction of the cost.

I know people here hate Tek instruments - and yes, there are a few stupidities, especially around the UI of the DPO5xxx-series - but:

 - They are rock solid stable, at least in my experience. They don't randomly crash, or worse: display wrong results.
 - They have pretty decent analog frontends.
 - They have protocols decoders that are solid (and work better than, for example, Saleae Logic decoders)
 - They can easily be scripted (via SCPI) to do what I want them to do, _and_ they are stable when doing that.
 - Their UI performance is okay, except for really long waveforms. This is actually my biggest issue - using the UI with 120M waveforms is borderline painful.
 - Active probes are available on eBay
 - I can use the Scope remotely over the network without limitations.

But the reason why I keep going back to this instrument is that it's versatile enough that it can do _all_ of this, and quickly switch between usage cases. For example, after finding test points for an I2C bus I can check the analog voltages, then quickly setup a long capture, and decode into a CSV file. I don't need to re-wire my setup to use a logic analyzer. I don't need to buy a different scope if I want an "analog-like experience" (instead I just press the DPX button).

On the negative side, I've never been a big fan of the integrated MSO port, some of the trigger limitations are annoying, and they seriously miss a few more physical keys (like the DPO7xxx have for trigger setup).  But aside from that, I'm very happy with this instrument and haven't felt a need to upgrade in the past 7 years (which, combined with my TEA, means a lot).

(For the record I was also pretty happy with the DPO4034, but going back to it now I miss some of the flexibility that I've learned to love.)

[jake111]

I've used a Tek DPO4034 for a long time, eventually switched to a Tek DPO5034 ~7 years ago for which I paid ~$5000 back then. [...................] happy with the DPO4034, but going back to it now I miss some of the flexibility that I've learned to love.)

My experience:  Any design *started* after Tek joined the Danaher group and killed off the older experienced engineers (or made them rage quit?) had issues.  I believe the DPO5000 series was started before this happened but completed after, and the first production runs had so many problems that the DPO5204 were popping up on ebay, bricked, for under 3 grand for a couple seasons.

I believe DPO/MSO/MDO4000B redesign of the original series was done post-Danaher but still retained the original OS and therefore very, very stable and just an all around great scope, but IMHO the MDO was a bad idea because that platform did not have the horsepower to do so much at once, and the latency of the mixed domain functions demonstrated this to some extent.  However one attractive feature of the -B series and after was the ability to use the 1GHz passive probes, TPP series.  I don't think they were over 4pF so if you didn't need diff, you had something very nice for catching high frequency harmonics and the like with minimal parasitic intrusion of your DUT.

I only used the -C series briefly but they had that same "cheap" feeling as the DPO/MSO/MDO3000 series that they introduced at the same time as the 4000B series and it will be interesting to see what pops up on ebay needing repair.  This is one of the reasons that the original DPO/MSO4000 seem to retain their value so much, they are workhorses, I saw ridiculous hour counts on many of them and never saw a failure and I believe they had at least 15 of them in the lab.  I know there are some small issues with one or two power supply circuits that can manifest but I suspect that is due to thermal abuse, not taking care to keep the vents clear.  Not sure.

For me, the DPO/MSO4000 first gen set the standard that I judge other scopes by and this is probably one of the reasons that I find many Agilents to be so disappointing.   Now also keep in mind, I am the guy that likes to buy the best tool in order to save as much time as possible, so that there is a little left for my wife.  Time is money.  And therefore woman(i.e. wife) = time x money.  Therefore woman = money^2.  And since money is the root of all evil, money = sqrt(evil), therefore woman = (sqrt(evil))^2 = evil.  QED

[jake111]

See you are [..................]ost of the scopes of yesteryear.

[.......................................]

I looked at [.................] a parallel universe [/b]

Certainly a larger universe than yours.

Threads like these get passionate depending on experiences and POV however the specs of a piece of equipment and a users ability to use it to its capability always wins the day. We can go round and round about certain ways things should be done but the truth is modern equipment is very capable (even a $500 DSO) yet not all brands do the same thing the same way nor they need to.

I grew up in a time when Tek ruled the roost and have owned a few of their Asian manufactured models over the years that now pale in comparison to models made by other Asian brands of today.
To fully understand the capabilities of the modern DSO we need study the architecture of their designs to see what use case they're optimized for, be it to mimic a CRO's capabilities or maximise the capabilities or a DSO. Each has their advantages and each offer tools to allow crossover and mimic what the other is better at.

Understanding the tool set of your instrument is paramount to getting the best from it. One users use case will be for the least amount of button pressing while another the flexibility to get the best overall capability yet not suffer from too much dead time.

ymmv

I'm not letting on to who I am, what I've done, and what my experience is.  This is the internet where a 12 year old can be a nuclear physicist on a forum.  All I can do is claim I have the experience and state my opinion like you guys are, except hopefully with the cocky "my opinion is supreme" attitude that discredits everything you say.

FYI my first scope was a Tek 485, that's as far back as I know and as far back as I care to know, servicing that thing was a real pain.  I can't even give it away nowadays.

[james_s]

I'd be shocked if you really couldn't give away a Tek 485. That's a classic and one of the highest bandwidth analog scopes available, it was a real exotic piece of gear when new and it's still impressive today. If you need 350MHz bandwidth there are no new scopes on the market that offer that at a price most hobbyists can afford.

[tautech]

I'd be shocked if you really couldn't give away a Tek 485. That's a classic and one of the highest bandwidth analog scopes available, it was a real exotic piece of gear when new and it's still impressive today. If you need 350MHz bandwidth there are no new scopes on the market that offer that at a price most hobbyists can afford.

SDS2352X-E and more capable than a 485 ever was.

[tautech]

Not needing active probes? Then get a Siglent.

https://siglentna.com/product/active-probe/

[jake111]

I wish I knew what people were talking about with Tek's being slow!  Do people always use them with the capture depth at max settings or something?  The fastest Rigol I've used was as laggy as a Tek 3000 with FFT and averaging enabled at max capture rate   

[jake111]

I wish I knew what people were talking about with Tek's being slow!  Do people always use them with the capture depth at max settings or something?  The fastest Rigol I've used was as laggy as a Tek 3000 with FFT and averaging enabled at max capture rate   

The slowest Keysight is literally 10x faster than a Tek.
Every time I have to measure some current I need to use the Tek, and every time of that I want to smash it.

Not to be impolite but that's a very broad and very incorrect statement...  Unless the Tek you were using was actually a rock?  Or maybe some sort of shrubbage 

[jake111]

Are you sure they weren't rigols with tektronix labels glued to them? 

[james_s]

SDS2352X-E and more capable than a 485 ever was.

I was not aware of that, looks like a lot of bang for the buck for a new instrument, although at almost 900 bucks it's considerably more than I've ever paid for a scope, and I would say well beyond what all but the most serious hobbyists are going to spend. There's a shrinking but still quite large gap between that and the say <$250 used scope hobbyist market.

[tautech]

SDS2352X-E and more capable than a 485 ever was.

I was not aware of that, looks like a lot of bang for the buck for a new instrument, although at almost 900 bucks it's considerably more than I've ever paid for a scope, and I would say well beyond what all but the most serious hobbyists are going to spend.

Yep, it's more of a serious hobbyist DSO or for a small company that just needs some cheap BW however as the hobbyist buyer is generally not adverse to hack a DSO it's smaller bro SDS2202X-E for just $619 is a lot more attractive.

There's a shrinking but still quite large gap between that and the say <$250 used scope hobbyist market.

Yes the gap is getting much smaller as ppls get to understand and accept the power of a DSO plus less are bothered now with keeping the older gear functional because as their time becomes more precious they just wanna have something they can use and not have to fix.
That's where I was once and while I enjoyed fixing CRO's it was time lost when you could be doing something else. 

[Sparky Faraday]

Yes the gap is getting much smaller as ppls get to understand and accept the power of a DSO plus less are bothered now with keeping the older gear functional because as their time becomes more precious they just wanna have something they can use and not have to fix.
That's where I was once and while I enjoyed fixing CRO's it was time lost when you could be doing something else. 

Bingo! The older you get the more valuable your time .

[nctnico]

I wish I knew what people were talking about with Tek's being slow!  Do people always use them with the capture depth at max settings or something?  The fastest Rigol I've used was as laggy as a Tek 3000 with FFT and averaging enabled at max capture rate   

Well, what is the purpose of of long memory if you can't really use it? I have an R&S RTM3004 on my bench as well and this really is a nice all-round scope which doesn't slow down at all. Try it if you have a chance. Rigol is not a good benchmark to compare against.

[james_s]

IMHO Windows has no business being on an oscilloscope.

The older TDS series work great, I have very few complaints. Why they started using Windows is beyond me. A scope shouldn't need to boot a fullblown operating system off a hard drive.

[Mr. Scram]

Not to be impolite but that's a very broad and very incorrect statement...  Unless the Tek you were using was actually a rock?  Or maybe some sort of shrubbage 

It depends on your definition of "faster" but the Keygilent ASICs do seem to make a noticeable difference.