I am in danger of being accused of necroposting here, I have a quick comparison between the Owon and the Hantek DSO1062B and a quick warning note about the Owon.
I won't even start to redo Mike's review other than to add a few of my own additional comments that I don't remember seeing in his review, but I will do a short comparison with the Hantek DSO1062B.
In general for quick diagnosis I find the HDS3102M-N really pretty handy, it takes up minimal desk space, although the UI takes a bit of getting used to. The Owon's UI itself is very responsive, and the version of firmware I have on mine doesn't wait for you to press a button on turning on. Owon advertises a 640x480 screen, but if it is it's only used in 320x240.
To compare, I also have a Hantek DSO1062B upgraded to 200MHz, and although the Hantek has a larger screen and proper 640x480 resolution, it is subject to even more glare than the Owon's. The Hantek is also a massive device in comparison, although it comes with a slightly more sensible carry case than the infamous Owon "look like a dick" case. The Hantek also doesn't need the silly adapters for things like USB sticks and probe calibration.
The screen update rate on the Hantek is much lower than the HDS3102M-N, even with the deep memory reduced to the minimum. I should note though that the Hantek has 1Mpt memory compared to the Owon's diddly squat. The UI is marginally easier to use on the Hantek mainly because there are more physical controls, and the Hantek UI looks more modern if that's important to you. Boot time for the Owon is 9s compared to 20s for the Hantek.
Regarding build quality, they're of a similar ilk, but the Hantek's multimeter bolt on in my example has never worked properly. I did have it open for a couple of hours to try to fix it, and it seemed to work if the stars were aligned, but I never figured out what the problem was with it so gave it up as a bad job. The Owon's works, but I can't say I'd be in a hurry to use it. Battery life between the two is similar, you'll get about five or so hours out of each. Thankfully, both seem to hold there charge for a few weeks at least when switched off. The stand on the Owon doesn't seem to have the same options afforded to the Hantek. You're pretty much limited to one setting of about 40 degrees off the horizontal, and one at about 15 degrees of the horizontal, so not the best working angle in a lot of desktop scenarios.
The Hantek uses a weird 2-4-8 sequence for the timebase whereas the V/div is the more generally accepted 1-2-5. The Owon uses the standard 1-2-5 on both the vertical and the horizontal.
If you do choose to update your Hantek to 200MHz, you'll need to shell out for some new probes too I'm afraid, those included aren't great. What is pretty rubbish on the Hantek is the noisy trace, even with 20MHz LPF switched on, in fact it doesn't seem to make any difference to the noise level whether it's on or off. The Owon doesn't appear to have a 20MHz LPF by the way.
So which do I pick up when I need a portable scope? Just purely down to form factor, it would be the Owon. For general probing about and quick diagnostics it just makes sense.
As an aside, surely we must be due a really decent reasonably priced scope with a decent touch UI? Velleman's tablet WiFi attempt is a joke by the way, maybe I should do a review of that POS to show just how bad it is.
Anyway, back to what happened today.Although I don't have a day to day need for a truly portable scope, and I very rarely do mains stuff, too hard to get all the approvals. But today I used the Owon for diagnosing a PSU problem within a bit of test equipment so because it's battery powered it's isolated.
However, there is isolated and isolated. Firstly, the two inputs are not independently isolated from each other, despite the plastic BNCs. No biggie, I pretty much expected that, and measured that before using it on this repair job, but it is worth keeping that in mind.
Anyway, while using it today, the battery was starting to get a bit low, so I plugged it into the supplied charger.
The 10V PSU that came with the scope is an inline mini-brick like and I incorrectly assumed that it was isolated. If you use this scope with its AC adapter plugged in to the mains, it is NOT isolated. The brick uses a 3 pin IEC connector for its AC input, and the IEC earth goes all the way through to the ground of the scope's probes.
I managed to make one repair job into a much worse one as a result, and blew up (at least) a high voltage MOSFET that I don't have anything close to in spec in stock. It also tripped my house RCD and AC circuit, as well as the 2A fuse I had in the DUT's mains plug.
(For the avoidance of doubt, the Hantek's power supply/charger is isolated by the way).
Of course, all of this is covered in the manual... for those of you who do RTFM. The moral of the story is: know your test equipment, and if in any doubt always check. And a 3 pin IEC lead is a good indicator that you should check.
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