Strange strategy of the HP successor company...
These new instrument have some slight improvements over the new (budget) 34461A, but especially in relation to these new features real premium prices. (Some more memory, 2 additional current shunts, slightly better volt reference..)
Obviously, they are going back to their roots.. in former times HP stood for "High Price".
The 7 1/2 digit 34470A still has got no LTZ1000 reference inside, very obviously.
This would make absolutely sense at that level of resolution.
And also, it is as costly as the 3458A..
I wonder, which kind of volt reference they use; I doubt that an LM399H can further be selected for 16ppm/yr. stability.
I'm waiting for the complete specs, if these new instruments really make sense at these prices.
OK, there are the specs.
They claim additionally an "AUTOCAL" for these instruments.
But that function is not as powerful at all as in the 3458A!
The INL of the A/D is 2ppm and 1.5ppm only, and therefore not capable of performing a complete range autocal, as in the 3458A.
This may only compensate some T.C. drifts of the components, nothing more.
Disappointing for that price.
And there are some bugs in the specs, concerning memory depth and reading speed:
I assume, they offer optional 50000 rdgs/s maximum , but 50000 or optionally 2Mio readings memory depth (not 2Mio/s reading rate).
The 10µA and 1µA ranges are realized by higher amplification on the same 100µA shunt..as the burden goes down by factors of ten, each. Maybe they copied Daves µCurrent circuitry?
I doubt, that they can really guarantee the same accuracy on all three ranges... spec is "typical" values for these ranges.
Frank