I have some money saved up and am looking to invest in a entry level oscilloscope, definitely not high bandwidths or crazy features since I just don't have the money but something with decent functionality.
I am stuck between two price brackets. The first oscilloscope: the Rigol DS1052E (which can easily be upgraded to a DS1102E for free via a software trick which is well doucmented) costs $329 and is 2 channels, 50MHz, 1 Million point memory, 1G samples per second and a 5 inch older style display.
Or should I go up in price and go for a scope around $800 that has more features? I am leaning toward this option since I have enough saved up for this and it makes more sense to me to buy a newer scope as it wont be outdated as fast.
But my question is should I buy the DS1000Z series (12M point memory, 70MHz, 1G samples per second, 4 channel, plus 16 logic channels, slightly older, smaller screen, ) or get the DS2000A series (newer, bigger screen, , 2G samples per second,, 2 channels, 70MHz, 14M point memory, 'lower noise floor')? Both are around $850 for base model.
Any opinions or experience with first time scope buying? Or experience with Rigol or the specific models I mentioned?
What are you intending to use it for? Analog, digital, both?
I suppose both, although at the moment most of the stuff I like to play with for fun at the moment is digital and repetitive type signals (square wave, PWM etc.). I read a good rule is to get a scope rated for 5 times the frequency of square wave you want to measure (cause of harmonics etc.). So I suppose with a 50 or 70 MHz scope I would be able to view square waves up to 10 or 14 MHz which is probably fine enough.
I do want to at some point explore building my own analog controlled bench top power supply not sure if that is a demanding use of analog capabilities of scope or not.
Hi,
I have used oscilloscopes quite a bit over the last 20 years.
I like the nice expensive MSOs with big colour screens and serial data decoding etc.
But what I find I value the most is portability and isolation.
A lot of my home projects I do at the kitchen table. I have two oscilloscopes at home, a bench top Tektronix (a bit old now) and a small, cheap DSO QUAD. I nearly always use the DSO QUAD. It is small and portable (I can put it in my pocket). Also, it is isolated (isolated from ground, that is, since it runs off a battery). This means I don't have to have the probe ground pin on the ground in my circuit. I can observe the waveform quickly and easily across any component in then circuit. The bench top oscilloscope can't do this as the probe ground clips are connected to the ground pin from the supply cable. There are ways around this of course, by using two probes referenced to ground and subtracting them, or using (expensive) isolated probes, but they are a bit of a hassle.
The DSO QUAD cost me AU$200. There are some things that annoy me about it (do not use it to get a reliable voltage measurement, use your multimeter), but its convenience wins out.
If I had more to spend, I would get a better oscilloscope, but it would still be a hand-held portable one.
I recently faced the same decision, although it was not my first scope.
My last one had lasted 40 years and I was reluctant ot buy another as I would not get 40 years of use out of that..
I have used better ones at work but this was for me.
I plumped for the DZ four channel one with signal ggenerator, and I have been very pleased with it so far. The I2C and RS232 anailisis functions are very useful and the deep memory is great. I managed to find a softwae fault by spotting a missing pulse in the middle of a whole mess of signals two months ago.
It takes some learning to drive and I wish the signal generator would drive 5V TTL outputs but over all I have been quite pleased.
wes000000:
I am stuck between two price brackets. The first oscilloscope: the Rigol DS1052E (which can easily be upgraded to a DS1102E for free via a software trick which is well doucmented) costs $329 and is 2 channels, 50MHz, 1 Million point memory, 1G samples per second and a 5 inch older style display.
Rigol just launched the DS1054Z at a price in between those two so your question is answered...
polymorph:
Agreed. There are a lot of upgrades over the earlier models.
The 100MHz version of this scope has the same sample rate (1Gs/s). You won't really get 100MHz bandwidth with all 4 channels on.
With 2 channels running the 50MHz version won't be much different than the 100MHz version in terms of real bandwidth. With 4 channels running the bandwidth will be the same on both models. You need to go up to the next model range to do better.
larryD:
Agreed, time for storage scope.
I'll probably order the Rigol DS4034 next week.
You're going from a DSO quad to a DS4034? (For those who don't know, the DS4034 is a $5000 scope...)
