New Keysight 4 Channel Scope (1200 X-Series)

[w4tch0]

Assortment of cheap no name caps on the PSU. Crappy fan mounted in the worst way possible for acoustics. And then there was this non-sense with the screen and dead pixels... Now don't get me wrong. All of that is acceptable or expected if you are trying to build something as cheap as possible. But building something like that, in china, and then asking 3 times the price over something else of similar build quality does not sit well with me.

[Keysight DanielBogdanoff]

We're exploring whether or not it's feasible to add a lister into the 1000X scopes, but only in the exploratory phase right now.

I won't pretend that Keysight doesn't charge a premium for test gear. The low-cost oscilloscope market is definitely in a pricing race-to-the-bottom, and it's not a surprise that we come in at a higher price than many other manufacturers in this space. To "win" this "market" we'd have to push out scopes that simply wouldn't meet our standards on a number of different fronts.

@w4tch0, is there a thread or discussion around dead screen pixels? I must have missed it and neither I nor the scope support lead have heard about it.

And sure, the PSU caps aren't the best out there, but looking at the numbers the reliability of the 2-channel 1000X is insanely good. I obviously can't share numbers, but the AFR/MTBF is easily 2x better than a lot of our other gear.

I've also not heard anything negative from actual users about fan noise...

[w4tch0]

There was a fine print note in the original InfiniiVision 1000 X-Series datasheet that said that up to 5 dead/stuck pixels are not considered a defect. Seems to not be there anymore in the later revisions. Someone must've come to senses since that was frankly a bit ridiculous.

The 2 channel 1000x series is on the market barely for 2 years now so I think it might be a bit early to evaluate failure rate of the electrolytic caps but if Keysight is able to "make it work" and sell enough of the units for the price all power to them. I'm not saying the scope is bad it's just a matter of (my personal) expectation for the price point.

[Bud]

I've also not heard anything negative from actual users about fan noise...

Raising my hand (EDUX).
Also have the power switch occasionally stuck not able to turn the device off. A bizarre mechanical fault.

[hugo]

Crappy fan mounted in the worst way possible for acoustics.

I have scraped the toy (ds1054z) and I got a real oscilloscope (dsox1102g) loud like a refrigerator (double price). 

[Mr. Scram]

That's unfortunate. Fan noise is one of those things which make a huge practical difference, even though it's often completely invisible on the specifications sheet.

[PixieDust]

Still no reviews of the thing?

I'm also reading that the base model Keysight scopes are made by Rigol. So why the price premium?

[Keysight DanielBogdanoff]

@hugo, noted.

@Mr. Scram it sometimes gets put in the data sheet, but only when we're trying to make a point . I have heard of some people putting quieter fans in other scopes.

@Bud, that is really odd! How often does it happen?

@PixieDust The old 1000s may or may not have been third party . The 1000X, however, is different! Our Keysight-only ASICs and everything.

[PixieDust]

@PixieDust The old 1000s may or may not have been third party . The 1000X, however, is different! Our Keysight-only ASICs and everything.

Oh I see, yep, the comment I  saw was from a while ago. Now things make more sense.

[mikeselectricstuff]

@Mr. Scram it sometimes gets put in the data sheet, but only when we're trying to make a point . I have heard of some people putting quieter fans in other scopes.

The 1204 has a temperature-controlled fan - implemented as a linear regulator on the main PCB - this adds cost so clearly KS thought it important.
I've not run it long enough  to see what power it runs after fully warmed up, but at startup it is very quiet

[mikeselectricstuff]

And sure, the PSU caps aren't the best out there, but looking at the numbers the reliability of the 2-channel 1000X is insanely good. I obviously can't share numbers, but the AFR/MTBF is easily 2x better than a lot of our other gear.

I really can't understand why people get so worked up about caps. A failed cap is a very easy fault to diagnose and fix - if you can't fix that you have no business owning a scope

[nctnico]

And sure, the PSU caps aren't the best out there, but looking at the numbers the reliability of the 2-channel 1000X is insanely good. I obviously can't share numbers, but the AFR/MTBF is easily 2x better than a lot of our other gear.

I really can't understand why people get so worked up about caps. A failed cap is a very easy fault to diagnose and fix - if you can't fix that you have no business owning a scope

And even then... a good capacitor won't last long in a bad design while a not-so-good capacitor can last a long time in a good design. Either way Keysight won't push out stuff they'll need to fix for free (at least not on purpose).

[HighVoltage]

It seems that Keysight is not using the best power supplies for their scopes and that also has its benefits:

I bought a few Agilent dead scopes, including a great 4 Channel DSO7000 series and all it needed was some attention to the power supply.  But in each of these cases, it was not a bad capacitor, instead either a resistor or a NTC broke. Actually I never found a bad electrolytic cap in a broken Agilent scope.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Still no reviews of the thing?

Sorry - I was goiong to do something but too busy!
Basically it's pretty much the same as the  2-channel, with the addition of :
2 more channels
200MHz max bandwidth
Black case
LAN
Temp controlled fan
Slower bootup at the moment due to Linux - improvements are promised so wait & see before deciding. I'd say it's borderline uncceptable at the moment.

[Keysight DanielBogdanoff]

@Mike, the firmware update is scheduled for March.

[0culus]

@Daniel, at some point in the future I have been planning to add a digital scope of some kind to my lab (Tek 2465B is my main scope, and I all in all prefer the UX of the older Tek scopes...no menus and softkeys to work with, but that's just like...my opinion, man), but I definitely recognize the utility of a modern digital scope for one shot triggering and such. And given that as a hobbyist I can't afford basically any of the stuff that's competitive with the old HP and Tek boat anchors I own, this scope looks intriguing.

Is there any possible way for a hobbyist to get a demo unit to try out before sinking $$?

[Berni]

Nice to see but i'm still sticking to my good ol MSO6034A

You can compare features and memory size, but there is one thing that is not found on the spec sheet. Responsiveness

Historically Agilent scopes always had a lighting responsive UI where almost every button press would happen pretty much on the next 60Hz refresh cycle of the display, including moving the waveform around the screen. I hope they intend to still do this on the new scope.

I personally don't find deep memory that useful. Got a scope with 1Gpts of sample memory but never really use it. Most of the time i just set up the trigger to capture what i want rather than scrolling trough a really long waveform. If i want a big picture of whats going on i just zoom on a lower sample rate, the scopes never alias or do weird sampling things so the waveform still is pretty representative in proper intensity grading and all.

Okay 1Mpts can feel limiting in certain cases, but going above 10Mpts doesn't really give that much of a benefit.

[2N3055]

Nice to see but i'm still sticking to my good ol MSO6034A

You can compare features and memory size, but there is one thing that is not found on the spec sheet. Responsiveness

Historically Agilent scopes always had a lighting responsive UI where almost every button press would happen pretty much on the next 60Hz refresh cycle of the display, including moving the waveform around the screen. I hope they intend to still do this on the new scope.

I personally don't find deep memory that useful. Got a scope with 1Gpts of sample memory but never really use it. Most of the time i just set up the trigger to capture what i want rather than scrolling trough a really long waveform. If i want a big picture of whats going on i just zoom on a lower sample rate, the scopes never alias or do weird sampling things so the waveform still is pretty representative in proper intensity grading and all.

Okay 1Mpts can feel limiting in certain cases, but going above 10Mpts doesn't really give that much of a benefit.

We had this discussion before. It all depends what you do. If you are looking into something you exactly know how it looks you don't need lon mem. You just capture part you want to look at and that's it. After all that is what we did for all these years with analog scopes and delay triggering. Also not a problem if you are developing something from the scratch, and you can make something repetitive so you can keep on capturing it left and right until you see all of it. If you are reverse engineering, or looking at something at live system that you have to observe as it is, that it's a different story.

But I agree. 10 Mpoints is where things get useful. 1 Mpoint is problematic sometimes. Less is not really useful.

[Berni]

For the sort of capture everything and sift trough it afterwards i found the directly USB streaming logic analyzers more useful than a scope.

You get effectively infinite memory due to a PC having tons of RAM and uses compression to squeeze it down even further. This lets you record a full minute of activity at full sample rate. And looking trough all that data tends to be more convenient on a PC (Provided the software has a well designed UI)

Tho if you want to reverse engineer something like MIPI running at 800Mbit then yeah a fancy scope with deep memory is useful (Tho my scope has a serial decoder for it)

[2N3055]

For the sort of capture everything and sift trough it afterwards i found the directly USB streaming logic analyzers more useful than a scope.

You get effectively infinite memory due to a PC having tons of RAM and uses compression to squeeze it down even further. This lets you record a full minute of activity at full sample rate. And looking trough all that data tends to be more convenient on a PC (Provided the software has a well designed UI)

Tho if you want to reverse engineer something like MIPI running at 800Mbit then yeah a fancy scope with deep memory is useful (Tho my scope has a serial decoder for it)

Absolutely agree. But it's not always decoding. Sometimes it is as simple as PWM on solar charger glitching in certain regime of work..
As I said before, I have Keysight 3000T because it is excellent interactive scope, and Picoscope with 512MS memory for longer captures and math. I also found Digital Discovery  to be surprisingly useful, despite UI that's not very friendly. It can be used as simple pattern generator, and together with logic analyzer and decoding it was very useful in finding problems in few projects I worked on.
USB streaming analyzers are best for long captures. No argue there. Which one do you use, if you don't mind me asking?
Regards,
Siniša

[Berni]

I use the Saleae logic 16 and have been using the old old original first Saleae Logic (Back when they only made one type).

I got the first one for free somewhere way back and i found it really useful so i then bought the newer 16 one (Old one is pretty slow). Yeah the software is a bit basic, but it works well for quickly looking trough waveforms.

Because of it the MSO functionality on my scope sits with next to no use. Tho i did use the MSO of my scope for FPGA development because the extra speed is needed and having lots of channels is nice.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Nice to see but i'm still sticking to my good ol MSO6034A

You can compare features and memory size, but there is one thing that is not found on the spec sheet. Responsiveness

Historically Agilent scopes always had a lighting responsive UI where almost every button press would happen pretty much on the next 60Hz refresh cycle of the display, including moving the waveform around the screen. I hope they intend to still do this on the new scope.

The 1000 series is just as responsive as all the others.
I have a 3000T and an R&S RTM3004 on the bench but the Keysight is always the first I go to, primarily because of the responsive UI. The R&S mostly gets used when I need more screen for decodes or high input sensitivity or just another view.

[2N3055]

Because of it the MSO functionality on my scope sits with next to no use. Tho i did use the MSO of my scope for FPGA development because the extra speed is needed and having lots of channels is nice.

I did use MSO on Keysight few moths ago because I was looking at old instrument LCD protocol (one that has row/column without internal character generator), and I managed to figure out some details by noticing that some bits were flipping in synch with cursor on the screen...  Because it was in real time and fast.
Tool for the job. Keysight infiniivision scopes are not perfect. But they are the closest thing at the time that gives you that interactive feel of working on analog scope.
That, combined with other specialist tools gets the job done.

[Berni]

We do have a MSOX3000 at work and i do really like it since its essentially a slightly updated 6000 with a bigger screen, wavegen and slower boot time.

Tho what does irk me is that the X3000 has the same buttons on the front panel as the 6000 but they are in different locations. This often results with me hovering my finger in front of the wrong part of the front panel as i frustratingly look for the button i want to press. Oh and having a LED for AC BW 50Ohm next to the channel would be nice to have like it was on the 6000 (Seen lots of confused coworkers due to AC or BW limit being on without them knowing).

[2N3055]

Nice to see but i'm still sticking to my good ol MSO6034A

You can compare features and memory size, but there is one thing that is not found on the spec sheet. Responsiveness

Historically Agilent scopes always had a lighting responsive UI where almost every button press would happen pretty much on the next 60Hz refresh cycle of the display, including moving the waveform around the screen. I hope they intend to still do this on the new scope.

The 1000 series is just as responsive as all the others.
I have a 3000T and an R&S RTM3004 on the bench but the Keysight is always the first I go to, primarily because of the responsive UI. The R&S mostly gets used when I need more screen for decodes or high input sensitivity or just another view.

I agree. I did try R&S scopes (2000/3000) and they felt sluggish, not really slow but not fast either.  With 3000T, i can drag waveform left/right on the screen in real time.  Not so much with R/S. There is noticeable delay, sort of stuttering. Pretty much same as with Rigol MSO5000, maybe a bit faster, but still noticeable.

As I said, Keysight scopes are best scopes as far as interactive goes. Problem is that with very short memory your sampling rate drops off very, very quickly as soon as you go to a bit longer timebase. Sometimes that's not a problem, but sometimes is.

Regards,