Advice about oscilloscope to buy.

[Karel]

Tautech is just helping the OP with advice, that's all.

My impression is that tautech wants to sell siglent stuff.

Stuff that, if you want to sell it later on ebay, put you (or ebay) at risk to receive a wrongfull trademark claim...

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent-they-filed-a-'wrongful-trademark-claim'/

[Blisk]

OK
few things popu what I may considere.
First high voltage
Second if scope can be hacked and get more out of it.
And third some have lan, or maybe USB to connect it to computer.
Three which have poppedup most are sigilent and rigol and owon

[Lightages]

It seems to me that Tautech is merely showing information and clarifying some things. He stated an advantage to Siglent scopes. He then tells the OP to buy from someone else. How is he selling things and making money on this? It is good to be skeptical, but it is also nice to not accuse people of being entirely selfishly motivated and basically calling them liars and/or thieves just because they sell things. Anybody want to accuse Dave of being dishonest here for selling his products and commenting on them here? C'mon people.........

[tautech]

Yes, I do sell and use scopes as well as other "test equipment" and that doesn't qualify me to offer advice based on personal experience ?
You're joking right ?

Coincidentally the unbiased opinion that you keep pushing aggressively in the T&M threads have a very high correlation with your financial interests.

Yes, it might  seem that way to you.

tautech, you are a vendor, not a regular opinionated user, so please act accordingly.

Correction: I am a vendor and a regular opinionated user.

I do a small # of repairs in which I get to use the demo models I have and gain further experience and familiarity with models I stock. I don't and won't stock all Siglent models as some don't have a place in the NZ market. I endeavour to be aware of the technical strengths and failings of the products I represent and based on that try to make the best recommendations I can.
That's a privileged position that only a few members here can say that and some are much more knowledgeable than I.

My presence on this forum has little effect on any NZ sales I might gain and NZ is the only country I wish to sell in.
Fact is ,experience over the past decades of use, repair and investigation of several brand of scopes has ended up with me distributing Siglent, I openly display this in my signature and website link in my profile.
Before I became a distributor my pastime was repairing CRO's and a few DSO's, so gained quite some knowledge of the basic workings of a scope.

OK
few things popu what I may considere.
First high voltage
Second if scope can be hacked and get more out of it.
And third some have lan, or maybe USB to connect it to computer.
Three which have poppedup most are sigilent and rigol and owon

No order:

HV, how high? 100:1 probes are a good idea to have for anything over 150V. Err on the side of safety.

Nearly all modern DSO's have USB and LAN, datasheets will list the I/O's.

[zapta]

... it is also nice to not accuse people of being entirely selfishly motivated and basically calling them liars and/or thieves

'liar'? 'thief'?  You are making things up now.

[Fungus]

OK
few things popu what I may considere.
First high voltage
Second if scope can be hacked and get more out of it.
And third some have lan, or maybe USB to connect it to computer.
Three which have poppedup most are sigilent and rigol and owon

Rigol DS1054Z stands head and shoulders above everything else in the sub-$1200(ish) group simply because you can hack it and enable a ton of features. It's not an amazing device in itself, if you have a specific need like FFT there are better 'scopes. But ...  it's a good all-rounder, it's well built and all those features for $400 is hard to resist.

[Lightages]

... it is also nice to not accuse people of being entirely selfishly motivated and basically calling them liars and/or thieves

'liar'? 'thief'?  You are making things up now.

Coincidentally the unbiased opinion that you keep pushing aggressively in the T&M threads have a very high correlation with your financial interests.

Please take example from the more respective brands here such as the keysight guy. He is more respectful to the discussions here and doesn't paddle his pro-my-brand 'personal experience'. You and your brand are closer to pcbway spamming territory.

tautech, you are a vendor, not a regular opinionated user, so please act accordingly.

I don't need to say more.

[videobruce]

Since the suggestion came up early on, two vs four channels. Where/when do the extra two channels come in handy?
My other question; scopes under 100MHz, where/when/what aren't they suited for?

Regarding 'bugs', anyone else feel Siglent scopes are "buggy" per a comment eariler??

[nctnico]

Since the suggestion came up early on, two vs four channels. Where/when do the extra two channels come in handy?

I would never buy a scope with less than 4 channels. Having 4 channels makes life a lot easier because most circuits will have more than 2 signals of interest. Just think about an SPI bus which has 3 signals as a minimum but there are many more situations. When working on a project I easely find myself using 3 or 4 channels.

[videobruce]

But, do they always have to be measured at the same time?

[zapta]

My old faithful TDS210 had only two channels and worked just great for me (hobby use). When I had to replaced it recently I picked a 2ch R&S over a 4ch Rigol and never looked back. 'You must have X' statements should be taken with a grain of salt IMO. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

[nctnico]

But, do they always have to be measured at the same time?

If you want to relate them in time, yes. Having 4 channels makes life a lot easier in many situations. The number of scopes out there with 4 channels is enormous so the choice really is a no-brainer.

[Fungus]

Since the suggestion came up early on, two vs four channels. Where/when do the extra two channels come in handy?

I'd say "all the time". If you've got them you will use them.

IMHO your question should really be the other way around, ie. Why do some people think four channels is too many, what sort of electronics work do they do that two channels is enough?

My other question; scopes under 100MHz, where/when/what aren't they suited for?

The answer to that could get quite complicated.

Short answer: If you can't imagine a signal where you need more than 100MHz you probably don't need more than 100MHz.

Giving advice on bandwidth is pointless without discussing a specific measurement task. If you don't have a specific task then it's better to buy something cheap so you wasted less money when the specific task comes along.

100MHz is a good bandwidth for general non-professional, home-electronics work. 50Mhz is probably enough in practice but a certain manufacturer give you a free upgrade to 100MHz so you might as well take it.

[Fungus]

My old faithful TDS210 had only two channels and worked just great for me (hobby use). When I had to replaced it recently I picked a 2ch R&S over a 4ch Rigol and never looked back. 'You must have X' statements should be taken with a grain of salt IMO. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

You managed to tell somebody what to spend their money on without actually defining the term "hobby use". Well done, you should look for a job in politics.

"Hobby use" for me involves a lot of Arduinos and stuff. Two channels certainly isn't enough for that.

[videobruce]

I realize you can't ever have enough bandwidth, but cost is a factor. I figured 100megs was a compromise. I wouldn't even consider 50megs, not in todays world.
The next jump up (200MHz) gets pricey, especially if it is a 4 channel scope. I wanted to stay under $1000 US (maybe $1200). I also wanted 2 GaS sampling, above that really gets pricey.

Yes, I should of qualified my needs & use. My bad. I would say a couple of steps above 'hobby'.

[Simon]

can we cool please.

[zapta]

My old faithful TDS210 had only two channels and worked just great for me (hobby use). When I had to replaced it recently I picked a 2ch R&S over a 4ch Rigol and never looked back. 'You must have X' statements should be taken with a grain of salt IMO. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

You managed to tell somebody what to spend their money on without actually defining the term "hobby use". Well done, you should look for a job in politics.

"Hobby use" for me involves a lot of Arduinos and stuff. Two channels certainly isn't enough for that.

Yes, Arduino, ARM, etc, my own PCB designs. You can find some of my recent projects here https://github.com/zapta .

I qualified it as 'hobby use' recognizing that a professional setting may have different needs and priorities.

Once I designed and built from scratch a fully functional personal computer using only an analog multimeter and logic probe so am very skeptical of  'you must have X' statements. Focus should be on what you build and learn, not what equipment you have. YMMV.

[rstofer]

Since the suggestion came up early on, two vs four channels. Where/when do the extra two channels come in handy?
My other question; scopes under 100MHz, where/when/what aren't they suited for?

Regarding 'bugs', anyone else feel Siglent scopes are "buggy" per a comment eariler??

I bought the DS1054Z for two specific reasons:  I wanted 4 channels (more in a moment) and I thought decoding would be helpful.

I do a lot of uC and FPGA projects and the SPI protocol is a way of life.  Four channels makes this protocol easy!  CS' frames a transaction, MISO and MOSI carry the data and SCK clocks it.  Being able to see all 4 signals simultaneously is a great feature.  Having the bytes decoded on screen is just icing on the cake.

Frankly 100 MHz isn't a lot.  Most of my projects involve uCs clocked at 50 or 60 MHz.  External signals don't generally run anywhere near that fast.  My FPGA projects just might run up to 100 MHz but if they do, the 1054 isn't going to get the job done.  You need to be able to display at least the 5th harmonic to display anything that even resembles a square wave so don't count on being able to jam a 100 MHz square wave into a 100 MHz scope and see anything other than a sine wave at the fundamental.  A 100 MHz scope won't even display a 50 MHz square wave very well because it can't display even the 3rd harmonic.  Realistically, a 100 MHz scope might do a fine job of displaying 20 MHz square waves.  That's fine with me!  Almost every thing I do will be in that range.

In my view, scopes under 100 MHz are pretty useless because of the need to display at least the 5th harmonic.  A 10 MHz scope would be suitable for something in the 2 MHz range of square waves and, these days, that's pretty slow.  Two channel scopes are boring.  I have had 2 channel scopes for decades so I thought I would treat myself to something more capable.  I had a 10 MHz scope for quite a while and I used it for some interesting projects (like a floppy controller for my Altair 8800B) but in those days 6 MHz was smokin' and the Altair only ran at 2 MHz.

I'm not going to get rid of my Tek 485 350 MHz scope any time soon.  It doesn't have any features but it does have bandwidth.

Regarding 'bugs':  Make sure the comments are current with the latest firmware.  Manufacturers are working hard to improve firmware.  Try to separate the valid complaints from the nonsense given by detractors.  I did read the epic DS1054Z threads before I purchased one but I discounted most of the comments for 4 reasons:  The comment predates the latest firmware, the bug is in an area that I don't care about, the writer was on my list of detractors or the fact that some of the complainers aren't very good at using a scope.  Be certain to separate 'user error' from 'bug'.

[videobruce]

And the importance of sampling rate? Is 2GaS/S enough for most low to mid end work?

[Simon]

Two giga samples is plenty again it always comes down to what frequency you want to examine

[Fungus]

I qualified it as 'hobby use' recognizing that a professional setting may have different needs and priorities.

It's not about level, it's about what you do. "Electronics" is a very broad subject. Building radios isn't the same as designing microcontrollers which isn't the same as repairing audio amplifiers.

Once I designed and built from scratch a fully functional personal computer using only an analog multimeter and logic probe so am very skeptical of  'you must have X' statements. Focus should be on what you build and learn, not what equipment you have. YMMV.

True, but you can make life a lot easier...

[tggzzz]

And the importance of sampling rate?

It is only of marginal importance and is principally used as a sales headline; the front end's analogue bandwidth is the key measure.

To ram home the point, many high-end scopes sample at a rate much lower than the highest frequency they can measure. That works - and is valuable - with repetitive and pseudo-repetitive signals. (Pseudo-repetitive: e.g. a digital datastream where you are looking at the eye diagram to assess the signal integrity).

Too many years ago, I used a 25MS/s HP boat anchor to measure sub-nanosecond risetimes.

[Lightages]

Many questions about "what is the best" or "what do I need" are only really answerable two ways. What can you afford? If you need it you will know.

People looking for equipment don't want to buy the wrong thing of course and feedback on making a purchase is a good thing to avoid buying junk or something useless. Some types of electronics work needs very specific capabilities in equipment but the vast majority of equipment needs really comes down to what you can spend and what you want to work on. Buying a 2Msps scope to work on audio might work, but buying a 500MHz bandwidth MSO with 20Gsps is going to work better. The former is almost useless and the latter total overkill.

If you are going to work on voltages higher than 100V then a scope that has 400V capability is good. It is not the most important criteria. If you are only going to look at audio signals then probably you don't need 4 channels. If you are going to try and troubleshoot USB then 100MHz is not enough.

These kind of considerations and what most people want to spend are the reasons that the Rigol DS1054Z gets mentioned so much. It is capable enough to do what many people want to do with a scope and at the price is a good starting point to learn about scopes and also learn if you need more capability or not. Even if it is not good enough in some aspect after you learn what you really need, it is still a good auxiliary scope for looking at things and also can be sold at not too much of a loss.

From what I have seen and read I would not buy an Owon, but the Siglents do have some things to recommend them too.

Disclaimer: I have only used my Rigol DS1052E (hacked) and my DS1054Z (hacked) and have no experience with the other scopes asked about by the OP.

[zapta]

In my view, scopes under 100 MHz are pretty useless...

That's an extreme statement. Basically you imply that having a 70Mhz DSO is about the same as not having a DSO at all.  My 60Mhz TDS210 served me very well and I would keep using if I could.

Too much focus on equipment and feature list IMO rather what we design build and learn.

[Fungus]

I realize you can't ever have enough bandwidth, but cost is a factor. I figured 100megs was a compromise. I wouldn't even consider 50megs, not in todays world.

Of course.

The next jump up (200MHz) gets pricey

Yep. It's a tough call. What's the real, on-screen difference between 100MHz and 200MHz in practice?

Yes, I should of qualified my needs & use. My bad. I would say a couple of steps above 'hobby'.

It's not about 'level', it's about what you want to do. People went to the moon with less than a DS1054Z but if you're looking at the signal integrity of a simple (today) 50Mhz SPI bus then you need a lot more MHz.

A Rigol DS2000 can (I believe) be unlocked to 300MHz for about $840. That's about as much bandwidth as you can get for your budget but it's only 2 channels.

(Pair it with a DS1054Z and you're still in budget and will have enough channel/bandwidth combinations for just about anything.  )