Rigol announces "serious" scope: DS70000

[TurboTom]

Seems like Rigol intends to step into the "serious business" sphere: https://www.rigol.com/products/oscillosopes/DS70000.html

I wonder what kind of price point this monster will be aimed at and if we'll ever see an independent review of it. Interesting it is anyway... 

[thinkfat]

I wonder whom they're after. Keysight MXR series? They have a 6GHz 4 channel model in their lineup, too. But with the kind of software Rigol tends to make, that's going to be a tough sell.

[rvalente]

If you have a butt load of others people (company budget) money to put in the finest piece of gear why would you ever not consider the 60+ years of experience from Keysight/Tek/Iwatsy and R&S and buy a first gen Rigol? You'd crazy if you did.

[Mechatrommer]

will be fun to fill table...
MXR404A Infiniium, 4 GHz, 4 Channels, 16 GSa/s, 400 Mpts/ch, 200,000 wfm/s = $50K
Teledyne WaveRunner 8404M-R/MS, 4 GHz, 4 Channels, 20 GSa/s (40 GSa/s 2ch) = $?K
DS70004 StationMax, 4 GHz, 4 Channels, 20 GSa/s, 2 Gpts, 1,000,000 wfms/s = $?K
Lecroy WaveMaster SDA6000, 6 GHz, 4 Channels, 10 GSa/s (20 GSa/s 2ch) = $3K

Rohde & Schwarz RTM3K-104 4 Channel, 1 GHz 2.5 GSa/s (5GSa/s) 40 Mpts/ch $15K

[Kleinstein]

If you have a butt load of others people (company budget) money to put in the finest piece of gear why would you ever not consider the 60+ years of experience from Keysight/Tek/Iwatsy and R&S and buy a first gen Rigol? You'd crazy if you did.

At least initially it would not be so much about US market, more like China, India, Russia.  With additional duties and maybe export restrictions the price can be quite attractive there. I would not want to rely on Keysight service in North Korea or Iran.

With these scopes, it is not just the scope itself, but also the active probes - not sure if they are compatible with a major brand.

Once established it can be attractive to small US companies too, that don't get a special corporate rebate.

[2N3055]

UI seems much different than previous Rigol scopes. Which is good thing.

Like everybody already said, in this price/target market range, they will have to do better with software polishing and debugging.
Not that A-brands do everything perfect, but they perfected "we care about our customers" dance, even if it is not always true. But they do customers relations real well, they make you feel they care..
Also, all A brands are very good at very thorough instrument characterisation. Not that they will publish it all, but when asked directly, they know exactly how they instrument behaves and what it can't do.
It's just they don't put all it in datasheet. Or sometimes even say it on the record. But they will tell you something like, "...well, now that you asked, I believe it it might not be optimal for that purpose.. For that purpose I would recommend this and that as a better solution..."

I'm not sure how deep that mentality goes in Rigol.

[RobBarter]

Well if they want me to compare the GUI with my R&S RTM3004 and write a review I'm up for it.  Ease of use was one of my primary considerations when buying my latest scope, enough to pay the large premium.  Any new entry into this segment is always going to struggle with the GUI imho.  It just takes time to perfect it and iron out the wrinkles/bugs.

[thinkfat]

Not just UI, an instrument in that class has to be much more than just a waveform viewer, but much more of a "what information can we extract from all that data".

[Sighound36]

Don't forget the cut down MXR ( ) EXR as well.

The Rigol has been in the offing for a while price will surprise you, whether that will temp buyers away from the other big boys who know's?

[asmi]

Once established it can be attractive to small US companies too, that don't get a special corporate rebate.

Not just small companies in US, but everywhere. There are people here who own/run small businesses, who know what each penny is worth, and so they are not willing to pour tens of thousands $$ just for the badge, when there are "good enough" competitors for a fraction of price. Remember that measurement equipment doesn't actually measure anything, their operators do, so if operator came up with a way to measure something and it works, nothing else matters. So if some scope works for your use cases, that is all you ever need. Nobody buys some seriously expensive equipment on hope that it will be useful one day in the future.

[Sighound36]

There is also this unit the Max7000 which can be configured to multi instruments I suspect including a RTA and quality VNA as well as the scope

https://www.rigol.com/products/oscillosopes/MAX70000.html

"The MAX70000 series of time domain workstations are software-definable measuring instruments based on data acquisition and analysis systems and arbitrary signal synthesis. Equipped with the "Phoenix" chipset of RIGOL's independent intellectual property rights, it has four 4GHz analog bandwidth receiving channels and four 5GHz analog bandwidth transmitting channels, and can be flexibly configured into a variety of high-performance instruments according to customer applications."

[rvalente]

At least initially it would not be so much about US market, more like China, India, Russia.  With additional duties and maybe export restrictions the price can be quite attractive there. I would not want to rely on Keysight service in North Korea or Iran.

With these scopes, it is not just the scope itself, but also the active probes - not sure if they are compatible with a major brand.

Once established it can be attractive to small US companies too, that don't get a special corporate rebate.

I could not agree more but, what kind of money is there Iran and North Korea? Other than some crazy dudes saying they're developing nuclear weapons (all regime propaganda IMHO). I understand companies must grow and achieve bigger markets but, this seems to me such a big step forward... I mean, they've not polished the firmware for the MSO5000 yet...

In Portuguese we've a say: the wider the step, the bigger the fall.

[SilverSolder]

There is also this unit the Max7000 which can be configured to multi instruments I suspect including a RTA and quality VNA as well as the scope

https://www.rigol.com/products/oscillosopes/MAX70000.html

"The MAX70000 series of time domain workstations are software-definable measuring instruments based on data acquisition and analysis systems and arbitrary signal synthesis. Equipped with the "Phoenix" chipset of RIGOL's independent intellectual property rights, it has four 4GHz analog bandwidth receiving channels and four 5GHz analog bandwidth transmitting channels, and can be flexibly configured into a variety of high-performance instruments according to customer applications."

Love how they made a point of that - an appeal to customers concerned about possible American export/sales restrictions?

[nctnico]

If you have a butt load of others people (company budget) money to put in the finest piece of gear why would you ever not consider the 60+ years of experience from Keysight/Tek/Iwatsy and R&S and buy a first gen Rigol? You'd crazy if you did.

At least initially it would not be so much about US market, more like China, India, Russia.  With additional duties and maybe export restrictions the price can be quite attractive there. I would not want to rely on Keysight service in North Korea or Iran.

You'd be surprised how much stuff from the US gets exported to those countries. In the era when the USSR was still a thing US manufacturers would even go so far as to implemented features required by the KGB for monitoring purposes.

[Sighound36]

[openloop]

At least initially it would not be so much about US market, more like China, India, Russia.  With additional duties and maybe export restrictions the price can be quite attractive there.

Yes, exactly. That Huawei clusterf*ck, plus Adobe's Venezuela debacle placed a real, tangible value on products free of American IP (whatever that means these days) and service contracts. At least for companies counting on doing business in China.
How serious this is in a long run - nobody knows. But some are more paranoid than others, e.g. RISC-V Foundation has moved to Switzerland...

In short, yes, this scope has a lot of market potential.

[Keith956]

Rohde & Schwarz RTM3K-104 4 Channel, 1 GHz 2.5 GSa/s (5GSa/s) 40 Mpts/ch $15K

You can pick one up much cheaper than that, I paid $9k for a new RTM3104.

But yeah, that Rigol looks interesting.

[asmi]

OMG! I want this! It will probably cost more than my car though, so I don't think I will be able to afford it any time soon.

[SilverSolder]

[...] Adobe's Venezuela debacle [...]

Another reason (as if we needed one) to be skeptical of cloud services.

[Datman]

They still have 8-bit input converters, no more...

[asmi]

Yes, exactly. That Huawei clusterf*ck, plus Adobe's Venezuela debacle placed a real, tangible value on products free of American IP (whatever that means these days) and service contracts.

There is already a market of ITAR-free satellite components (or complete sats). It's not just the restrictions and sanctions per se, but also associated bureaucracy to stay in compliance, even for legitimate customers. Everyone who has even been dealing with ITAR knows how much of the pain the butt it is.

[ivonenand]

If you have a butt load of others people (company budget) money to put in the finest piece of gear why would you ever not consider the 60+ years of experience from Keysight/Tek/Iwatsy and R&S and buy a first gen Rigol? You'd crazy if you did.

Sure, Keysight makes great stuff, with lost of good engineers. But, just saying that the company has been around for XY years, does not mean that the next product they ship will be great. Ever heard of the Boeing 737-Max? Boeing has 70+ years of experience. Did lots of great planes, many better than Airbus, yet 737-Max is a disaster. Many of the engineers at Boeing that had experiences (and knew what they were doing) retired, and didn't really write down much. So the 737-Max was done by newer engineers that made all sorts of mistakes, the elder (and now retired) engineers probably wouldn't. So it's useless to say that the company has 70+ engineers, if the newer products are done by newbies.

Again, not saying Keysight is a bad company, or that Rigol is a great one.
Ivo

[YetAnotherTechie]

Call me superficial, but having an e-paper label that refreshes when you software-upgrade the device is super cool...

The model and main parameters of the product are displayed on the electronic sign, and the content can be kept for 20 years even in the shutdown state. After the instrument is upgraded, the performance parameters can be automatically refreshed to ensure that the instrument asset information matches.

[Fungus]

They still have 8-bit input converters, no more...

The video says 16 bits. 

But 8 bits is enough for anybody when you have a high sample rate. Just average a few samples together and you can have 10, 12, any number of bits you like.

[exe]

All brands that I used to love disappointed me at some point. So now just buy whatever suits me best, without much looking at the label.