Don't care for Rigol scopes as had tried a couple and first one was defective after about a week, as channel started cutting out at random and second one kept locking up issues at random. One thing I do give them credit for is they changed the market and pretty much forced HP and Tektronix to start innovating again.
I'm sorry but aside from sticking a poor spec Spectrum Analyzer in an entry level scope Tek hasn't really been innovative for a very long time. Which is no surprise considering it's part of the Danaher "family".
In terms of innovating in DSOs it's to a large part LeCroy who has been and still is pushing technology ahead, even more so than Keysight (HP doesn't do scopes or T&M for almost two decades now so there's no point calling them "HP"). Especially in the extreme high-end there's pretty much LeCroy and nothing else, not even Keysight.
Tek has been pretty much trailing LeCroy and Agilent/Keysight for the last 15 years or so. I wish this wasn't the case as more competition is always better for buyers, also Tek had some of the best analog scopes ever made. However Tek always seemed to struggle when the world moved to digital scopes, and they still do.
Not really, Tek has still scopes that have a whopping 10k points of storage
, and the Agilent scopes are expensive as always, and their memory is also very limited.
Innovation is not always using the latest technology, but also create better/cheaper products. This were both companies still fail.
Expensive as always is a understatement, Rigol DS1054Z is pretty much the best value for the buck, when it comes to budget scopes. That one thing both Agilent and Tektronix are both failing at, is coming out with a good budget scope.
I don't know, the Keysight DSOX2000 is still a pretty good entry level scope scope, and there's also Rohde & Schwarz with their
Hameg R&S Value Instruments HMO Series which includes some really nice low-end scopes. And some of them aren't
that much more expensive than a Rigol DS1054z.
Good example is the Tektronix TDS2012C at $1430.80 and only 2.5k point Record Length on both Channels? The only decents model they currently have out cost 4k plus. They do have some good models, but only on the higher end of the market.
Not really. Tek's higher end is pretty dire, too, aside from the DPO70kSX which has a nice form factor for ATEs (which on the other side makes it a poor bench scope). They're essentially milking their old DPO7k/70k scopes which were't great when they came out (sluggish UI, slow processing) and by now are now pretty dated in comparison.
Not saying that HP and Tektronix has to be at the same $399 price point as Rigol, as do realize that they could be very well cutting corners and rushing stuff to the market to get at that price point and is from China, but come out with a decent refreshed model budget scope at around and no more then 1k price point. They seem to only be after the fat margin and rebadging stuff.
There's a certain price point where coming out with their own product just isn't worth it, so big brands like Keysight and LeCroy just re-badge cheap Chinese scopes and Tek essentially milks their stone-age entry level designs. Some got bitten (i.e. LeCroy with their crap WaveAce Siglent rebadges), others like Agilent/Keysight had more luck (because Rigol is still somewhat better at firmware than Siglent).
Rigol I am no fan off as like I stated before, I think they after the quick buck. To me stuff is just rush out the door with bugs and all. I had alone myself had one defective scope and another that just kept on locking up.
I'm not a fan of Rigol myself, but the fact remains that the DS1054z is incredible value for money, and despite its problems its still a very good beginner's scope.
However, the thing to remember however that we're no longer in the analog scopes era where Tek and HP were pretty much the only vendors worth considering. The market has changed a lot since then. Tek has been pretty much left behind technologically due to a long-term lack of innovation (which will be difficult to overcome). Keysight offers great scopes but especailly the larger models are regularly very expensive. LeCroy offers the most advanced scopes on the market (and for some stuff are the only game in town), however their low end (everything below the WaveSurfer 3000) is made of rebadges and pretty much sucks. Rohde & Schwarz offers some very nice and mostly decently priced entry level scopes under their 'Value Instruments' label (formerly 'Hameg') and some really good but really expensive upper mid-range and lower high-end scopes (RTM/RTE/RTO). Rigol offers the cheapest 4 channel scope on the market (DS1054z) which is a real bargain, however its larger scope models (DS4000/DS6000) pretty much suck. Siglent also offers some bottom-of-the-barrel scopes at low prices (although most of them are 2ch) but they have shown to be pretty much incompetent at writing firmware and tend to bring products to market which are full of bugs.
That means these days it's not enough to look at
HP Agilent Keysight and Tek because that means you pretty much miss out on most of what's available out there.