Okay, now I'm thinking I made a mistake to buy this scope. "A batch of bad IC's." I sold kits years ago and have been using chips for 25 years, lots of them. You know how many of the chips and uC's went bad? Zero. It's possible one or two went bad but a "batch". Something's wrong there and my guess it's not the chip manufacturer, it's in design somewhere or R&S cut a corner on specs.
I don't think you made a mistake there. On the one hand I complained above R&S's support above, but on the other hand, I surely can say that the hardware itself is fine, at least from my personal experience. Just remember that people are just speculating.
You know, R&S is constantly attacked in the most nonsensical ways. "This and that is total crap" etc. I think these attacks are only made because people WANT R&S to fail, they want to find something bad. If something doesn't have the right feel to your hand -- CRAP, what else?
At the same time, Rigol and Siglent are constantly praised, no matter what they do, and sometimes what they do is pretty absurd. Remember Siglent's rust? Remember Rigol's awful power supply overheating? Remember Rigol's awful bugs in the 5000 series? I saw this stuff in Dave's videos, and for me that's pretty inacceptable. But they are praised again and again and again while a manufacturer like R&S is harshly attacked because someone doesn't like a probe or whatever.
Rigol and Siglent have the (unfounded) reputation of "test gear for the masses" and as such are praised by people who identify with "the masses" (but actually just want to keep their money for themselves).
I think most of the criticism is not about test gear. It's about social status and self-image.
Many people refrain from criticizing Rigol or Siglent because if they did, they would be nagging killjoys. But they criticize R&S because then they are the ones who are rejecting the "luxury brand" which boosts their self-esteem.
I don't know about other people, but can say for myself.
I expect R&S to do
better than second tier manufacturers. In
every aspect. They have a
reputation to uphold. And they certainly
charge the price that goes with those expectations. So
for few thousand € more, I expect them to give
better probes than Siglent. And
less bugs etc etc.
I don't want to give them
any understanding or listen to
any excuses,
for that kind of money.
If they going to give
same level of product (or
worse probes than much cheaper Chinese scope) they are
not R&S anymore, they are
not premium manufacturer anymore (
for that product), and I
won't be paying only for
status and
social self image....
That's
me, some people don't do any advanced stuff anyway, even basic scope would fulfill their needs, they have money and they are prepared to pay for cool looking scope. And that is fine...
I certainly have many problems with new chipset based Rigol scopes, I find them to be huge disappointment and lost opportunity to make bigger impact on the market. DS7000 series had potential to be serious competition to Keysight 3000T series, but failed short of it many points.
I also have Siglent SDG6000X generator that, while it serves me quite OK, it still has many unfinished and unfixed points in their firmware, and quite frankly I'm not happy at the moment. I wish they would fix it, it's been more than 2 years since release.. They do seem to be doing much better with their scopes though.. But for a 250MHz AWG with I/Q modulation it is not that expensive...
If I paid 8000€ for it it would be back to manufacturer long ago. If I have bought it from R&S I would bitch about it here every day..
That is reality, if you're prom queen, even a small bad detail on the dress will get noticed, that wouldn't be on someone else. Price of fame.
So it's a mixed bag. But we should not mix expectations for cheaper products/low prices and premium products/high prices.