Your favourite brand of oscilloscope?

[japlytic]

My favourite brand of oscilloscope is Tektronix, but LeCroy is just as good, considering the fact that they pioneered the digital oscilloscope (and that their software options are good compared to most others).
What is your favourite brand of oscilloscope?

[tom66]

Re: Your favourite brand of oscilloscope?

Agilent, just from using their newer scopes, they are leaps and bounds ahead of struggling Tek. For older scopes I prefer Tek or HP/Agilent equally.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: Your favourite brand of oscilloscope?

Brand loyalty is one moral value which fades away easily when we speak about modern Oscilloscopes.
What matters to me today is which brand delivers the third generation of DSO at reasonable pricing.

Agilent and Rohde & Schwarz added touch screens on their third generation DSO, so to justify an crazy price premium which will act as profitability tonic while the end user does not gain much in retairn.
This explains all the race which is made about convincing people to consume such items.

While I do respect even the work of people which push pencils for a living,
when it comes down to become an accountant to my self, the list of candidates include only 2013 made Rigol & GW Instek offerings.

I do not bother with budget scopes, most of those makers are just Assembly lines, and this explains the lack of fresh R&D and firmware support.

By my book if the budget brands did not update their product lines until January 2014 with third Gen scopes, this will translate that they are dead.

While production lines & distribution channel are two separate things.
The second dies last, which leads to sales of not supported products.
Getting goods by a long lived manufacturer translates that he uses practices which work and they are recognized by many.

Japan from the other hand has an huge internal demand for high-End T&M and also has China next to it with 1B or more population.
With one so fat neighbor next door, European and Russian market is not that appealing to them any more.
The lack of marketing push about Japanese Oscilloscopes in my region reflects and verifies clearly their strategy, which is their focus in specific markets and no worldwide sales.

Under this new data or picture I will have to ask : Why to give a shit about IWATSU ?

PS: Kenwood, Leader, are dead.

[tom66]

Re: Your favourite brand of oscilloscope?

I would probably only buy a new Rigol nowadays, because I can't afford Agilent and for most applications the DS2000 provides better value for money than any comparable offerings.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: Your favourite brand of oscilloscope?

the DS2000 provides better value for money than any comparable offerings.

Does Rigolna pays well for such public statements ? LOL

When one modern DMM can do about 10 different measurements with standard parameters, and you need about a month for a quick evaluation to it.
I will have to ask how did you make your mind by not touching one such scope which can do 70 types of measurements with 1-7 selectable additional parameters for its measurement ?

If you are building faith by viewing video sources like the latest EEV CONAN the barbarian & GDS-2000A, this is plain entertainment.

Even me I do a triple filtering of any information before I pass it to others.

[tom66]

Re: Your favourite brand of oscilloscope?

Wtf? I am just saying value for money (£600 oscilloscope) it's better than Agilent, as Agilent don't have any good offerings at htat low price. I haven't tried the GW-Instek, but my personal opinion from looking at it:

- The user interface is not as refined as the Rigol. In particular I'm not a fan of the buttons on the top and the side. The Rigol has both on each side, which works better in my opinion.
- No pushable buttons!! -- big deal for me, I constantly use it on DS1102E.
- It's too big. I've not got much space on my desk.
- It's ugly. The Rigol looks better. I suppose this doesn't matter much, but it's nice to have the scope look better. The GW looks more like a toy.
- I haven't yet seen any genuine measurements showing the GW can do 80k wfms/s, but the Rigol has 52k wfms/s peak on some timebases with a guaranteed 12k wfms/s on the fastest sweeps. Which is pretty good. Will await information to see if GW is better than Rigol here.

I await the teardown to see if the GW is engineered better or worse than the Rigol. The Rigol looked really good inside. Like they actually know what they are doing. Apparently Rigol has a lot of ex-Tek engineers.

[Kiriakos GR]

Re: Your favourite brand of oscilloscope?

It is not my intention to monopolise this thread with my views as to was an defender of GW Instek.
Their Youtube channel has all ready videos ( proofs ), that their latest scopes they do have significant advantages.

http://www.youtube.com/user/gwinstek...ow=grid&view=0

Regarding how the GUI looks like, I am an older man and I do appreciate those days the size of the fonts.
I have even got recently a New watch with larger digits because in the age of 44 and under, most repair man are suffering from vision issues about focusing in the near objects, especially when they are bad illuminated or tiny.

But you are justified to make decisions with out taking in mind such parameters due to your age.

Genuine measurements ?
Those latest scopes are far more advanced of our expectations.

Its scope has it own secrets and a different steering wheel.
Due to the enormous time needed as learning curve for one scope, it is more practical to stay close to products of the same manufacturer.

Personaly I did not have in depth experiences with other scopes (other brands) in my past, and by getting this GDS-2102A I will have to simply adjust to it.
Currently after two months of ownership I did not find even a tiny annoyance to it.
Other than the fact that both channels work at the same time base, the GDS-3000 makes the difference here but for a much higher pricing.

The four channel version of any scope is a far more complex design, memory gets shared, all four active channels could slow down the scope in some situations.

Either way when your compare numbers on paper (specifications), this is what you get for a single active channel.
If you verify as I did, that you do get what ever it was promised to you,
then everything is fine.