Author Topic: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102  (Read 27545 times)

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Offline blueskullTopic starter

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Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« on: October 13, 2015, 05:26:00 pm »
Just made the decision to get a reasonable powerful scope without paying $$$$$ to Agilent/Tek. The choice was an almost unused refurbished DS6102 with effective cal cert.

Will be shipped to me in days. At that time, I will post a review on this item. Meanwhile, there should be another shipment coming at that time, a used signal hound 4.4GHz spectrum analyzer with 4 pieces of near field EMI probes.

Thank god I am not married, so I still have money to support my expensive hobby.  ;D
 

Offline Mark

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2015, 06:20:41 pm »
Can you do a review of the Signal Hound too please :D
Which probes are you getting? 
 

Offline nbritton

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2015, 09:34:23 pm »
What is the rational for getting a high bandwidth scope? What I mean is that most people on this forum say that 100 MHz is enough for them and to get the DS1054Z, and they even go as far as to say that a high bandwidth scope is useless without active probes and apparently all other sorts of gear and special circuit design steps. Even people like Dave are saying you can get by just fine with a 20 MHz analog scope. Why then do people buy high bandwidth scopes? I'm in the market for my first 'digital' scope (owned an analog prior to this) and I'm totally confused about what I should get, I have a few thousand dollars that I can spend on a scope, yet people consistently tell me the DS1054Z will satisfy all of my current and even future needs. :-//
 

Offline GlowingGhoul

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2015, 11:25:04 pm »
What is the rational for getting a high bandwidth scope? What I mean is that most people on this forum say that 100 MHz is enough for them and to get the DS1054Z, and they even go as far as to say that a high bandwidth scope is useless without active probes and apparently all other sorts of gear and special circuit design steps. Even people like Dave are saying you can get by just fine with a 20 MHz analog scope. Why then do people buy high bandwidth scopes? I'm in the market for my first 'digital' scope (owned an analog prior to this) and I'm totally confused about what I should get, I have a few thousand dollars that I can spend on a scope, yet people consistently tell me the DS1054Z will satisfy all of my current and even future needs. :-//

If you have a couple thousand set aside for a scope, I'd recommend getting something more refined than the Rigol(though it's a terrific value and a useful tool). I'm biased towards Keysight(Who, like Tek and LeCroy are throwing in a large software upgrade bundle for free at  the moment), but there are other good options out there, both new and used. I have a 3024T and it's wonderfully responsive and the high quality materials on the controls give nice tactile feedback.
« Last Edit: October 13, 2015, 11:31:52 pm by GlowingGhoul »
 

Offline Neganur

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2015, 04:24:56 am »
These brands won't give me even 350m at the specified price range. I need ETS, which is not exist on any westeen brands' low cost products except for picoscope. I spent quite some time choosing between rigol and pico, and suddenly today a 50% off on ds6102 helped me made the decision.

Not sure about low cost since the DS6000 costs some 4.5k€ before vat in Germany, but I'm pretty sure the R&S RTM series has 100 GSa/s ETS and they are in that price range.
 

Offline Smith

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2015, 05:34:56 am »
Bought a 6104 for work (for another department) some time ago. I was quite pleased by the device. It definetly feels quality, and reacts quite fast. Its menu and settings feel so much better and faster than our 5 year old twice as expensive tek DPO4104
Trying is the first step towards failure
 

Offline nbritton

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2015, 05:44:55 am »
The model I got, DS6102, sells for $7880, which is $5910 after coupon. I got it at $3900, that translates to 51% off.

I knew tequitment had the 25% off select Rigol gear, but what about this coupon thing? What exactly do you mean?
 

Offline Neganur

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2015, 06:41:07 am »
RTM2102, the R&S equivalent of DS6102, sells for EUR9020, plus a EUR945 license for memory upgrade. That is 3 times the money I spent!

I maybe would not call that equivalent (no offense Rigol :o) and you also kind of said you don't need the bandwidth but the features/specs (ETS). There's for example the RTM2022 starting at 3.3k€ And I would also recommend to look at their bargain shop and special deals. Don't take the list price for granted either, call them and tell them your story. If you're willing to spend above 4k I'm sure they can find something for you.

Why do you need so much memory btw?
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2015, 11:26:57 am »
+1 for a review of the DS6000. I got my DS4014 from RigolNA clearance bin and couldn't be happier by its price/performance ratio.

Vbe - vídeo blog eletrônico http://videos.vbeletronico.com

Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #9 on: October 14, 2015, 12:24:20 pm »
Almost, but not new. Rigol NA clearance item.

Aren't they sold with just 90 days or so of warranty?

Anyways, some time ago I had the chance to try a DS6104, and wasn't very impressed. It's essentially just a larger variant of the DS4000 (more bandwidth and larger screen), with large memory but no search functionality whatsoever, and scrolling through its long memory makes it pretty slow. Also, FFT on that scope is a bad joke (only a few thousand points despite all the memory, less than many 15+yr old scopes), too. The hardware felt solid (typical Rigol) but the owner mentioned that it suffers from the same annoying bugs as the DS4000 (which he also had), and because it was sold in far lower numbers than the DS4000 it has seen even less updates than the DS4000.

Plus I would worry about support. Rigol doesn't seem to have fixed support cycles (don't expect many firmware updates after they stop selling it, which will be soon), and support overall is pretty much hit and miss (more 'miss' than 'hit').

If its very cheap and your expectations are reasonably low then it's probably an OK-ish scope, but its well below any of the scopes from the big brands (Keysight, LeCroy, R&S, even Tek) in that scope class.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2015, 12:26:54 pm by Wuerstchenhund »
 

Offline Karel

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2015, 01:21:14 pm »
We too have bought a DS6104. The price/performance ratio of it hasn't been beaten.
Overall, I like it. With two adc's we can run two channels on 5GSa/s or 4 channels on 2.5GSa/s.

Firmware is always a weak spot with Rigol. With the default fw version 00.01.04 it's impossible to use it via LAN.
The scope freezes completely. Via USB it works apart from that it's not possible to download the deep memory waveform data.

I reported the bugs three months ago and a couple of days ago we received a newer firmware (00.02.00.SP5) that solved the issue with the memory downloading
and the freezing of the scope when using LAN but as always it introduced a new bug.
When using LAN to poll for parameters and values, the scope sometimes responds with "command error" instead of the requested value.
Still, USB connection works fine.
 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #11 on: October 14, 2015, 05:47:58 pm »
Provided R&S is a very good brand, the market has proved itself -- they don't sell as much as Tek and Keysight in high end market, and they don't sell as much as Rigol in mid range market, and thye don't sell as much as cheap Chinese scopes (i.e. Rigol DS1052E).

Not sure what your point is. R&S only started selling any scopes in 2005 after they bought Hameg, and only started producing their own mid-range and high-end scopes since 2009, so obviously they sold less as Tek and HP/Agilent/Keysight who are selling scopes for many decades. And since they only more recently introduced their own bottom-of-the-barrel scope it's no surprise that they have sold less than Rigol of its DS1052E. At least in Europe R&S sells more of their scopes than Tek does these days, which isn't surprising as most of their scope offerings are pretty pale in comparison with the other big brands. Plus R&S has a long-earned reputation of producing top-notch gear, not just through their spectrum analyzers, test receivers and other RF gear but also because their broadcasting kit which is pretty much standard equipment around the world, plus all the civil and military kit they make.

Just saying.
 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #12 on: October 14, 2015, 07:43:01 pm »
My point is, if it is not as competitive at least in US market

Not sure where you get the idea, R&S has a pretty large presence in the US, from the major broadcasters to the US Air Force.

Quote
why bother since for the same spec sheet they sell for 3x the price.

Not really. Only lazy people pay sticker price, everything else comes down to negotiations. All big brands generally offer pretty good incentives to those that ask for them.

As to the spec sheet, well, it's just that, a list of specs. It tells you a few basic parameters a device should maintain if operated in a standardized test environment. There is much more what makes a test instrument which isn't listed on a spec sheet.

Quote
Without offense, but I think, again, without offense, many EU brands hold their premium price ONLY because import tax and other political and regulatory requirements that protect them. In an open fair market they do not compete well.

Again, I'm not sure what you're talking about, aside from the fact that there aren't many big "EU brands" (in scopes, R&S is the only one, the rest are US and Japanese companies). Import tax hasn't prevented Keysight (an American company) to become the largest vendor for test equipment in Europe, and again, it didn't prevent R&S (a German company) from selling lots of high end lab equipment, radio comms testers and broadcast equipment in the US. And I'm sure you don't want to suggest that the EU somehow "protects" Keysight, or that the US does the same for R&S.

At the end of the day, Chinese brands are only cheap as long as you can live with lower performance, firmware/software faults (with no gurantee as to when the problems will be fixed, or even if they will be fixed at all!), support that's pretty basic at best, uncertain support cycles, and so on (good luck finding even something so basic as a proper calibration manual for a Rigol scope). All that isn't usually a problem for an instrument that costs say $600, but it does so for instruments that cost several grand unless you can easily write off the investment.

As I said, you get what you pay for  :)
« Last Edit: October 14, 2015, 07:45:40 pm by Wuerstchenhund »
 

Offline dadler

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #13 on: October 15, 2015, 02:13:06 am »
Are there any suggestions for a low cost active probe? The Rigol ones are just too expensive, so I might end up getting a Rigol to Tek adapter, and use a cheap second hand Tek (FET) one. Forget about the ASIC based ones, they are just way too expensive. The Rigol 1.5GHz one costs $4200!

I was able to pick up a used HP 54701A with all of the accessories, and the corresponding 1143A power supply box (also has DC offset control), for about $350 total on eBay. It's a 2.5GHz probe, 100k input resistance, 0.6pF input capacitance. It works well with my spectrum analyzer. I have also used it with my scope, but I rarely do so. Maybe look around on eBay?

There is also the 85024A FET probe. There are a lot of these on eBay, but they are more expensive and I suspect many of them have the front end blown out of them. Shahriar has one and uses it in some of his videos.
 

Offline Rupunzell

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #14 on: October 15, 2015, 05:46:53 am »
Active probes tend to have distortion and spurious response that may or may not be significant depending on specific measurement requirements. As a rule, active probes are very rarely used if at all with any SA in the stuff I'm working on. Zo or similar passive divider probes can be OK.

Check this:
http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/54701-97003.pdf?id=141370

Bernice


Are there any suggestions for a low cost active probe? The Rigol ones are just too expensive, so I might end up getting a Rigol to Tek adapter, and use a cheap second hand Tek (FET) one. Forget about the ASIC based ones, they are just way too expensive. The Rigol 1.5GHz one costs $4200!

I was able to pick up a used HP 54701A with all of the accessories, and the corresponding 1143A power supply box (also has DC offset control), for about $350 total on eBay. It's a 2.5GHz probe, 100k input resistance, 0.6pF input capacitance. It works well with my spectrum analyzer. I have also used it with my scope, but I rarely do so. Maybe look around on eBay?

There is also the 85024A FET probe. There are a lot of these on eBay, but they are more expensive and I suspect many of them have the front end blown out of them. Shahriar has one and uses it in some of his videos.
 

Offline hendorog

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #15 on: October 15, 2015, 06:15:40 am »
Quote
Not really. Only lazy people pay sticker price, everything else comes down to negotiations.

Harsh. But at the same time, and in your own way you do provide insight.

Perhaps you could consider:
* People that don't know any better - e.g. young and/or inexperienced
* People who lack the confidence to negotiate
* People with limited options - e.g local country pricing which tends to make the brand name stuff even more expensive.
* People with limited buying power.

Negotiating is a skill, it comes naturally to some, some people learn it, and some people just can't do it.
 

Offline Rupunzell

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #16 on: October 15, 2015, 08:18:00 am »
0.6pF at 2.5Ghz has a reactance about 106 ohms... and it is not linear or predictable due to a host of factors (connection length, connection configuration, stray capacitance, inductance and....).

Beyond harmonic distortion and spurious surprises from active probes, They might have non linear time delay -vs- frequency. Check this.

Circuit loading and related effects due to probes are a serious consideration at these frequencies. Keep this in mind as the test set up and measurements required are being made and planned.


Bernice


That's good. They gave me a z0 probe in the package, so as long as the dut is not load sensitive can I use this.
 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #17 on: October 15, 2015, 11:28:41 am »
Quote
Not really. Only lazy people pay sticker price, everything else comes down to negotiations.

Harsh. But at the same time, and in your own way you do provide insight.

It's not harsh. If you're going to spend a couple of grand on some piece of kit without doing some due dilligence then you're very likely to get an inferior (or even bad) deal. That's true with many other things in life as well, not just test instruments.

Quote
Perhaps you could consider:
* People that don't know any better - e.g. young and/or inexperienced

Well, they could for a start just ask someone who isn't inexperienced (maybe they know someone), or failing that just ask in some appropriate forum like this (and I guess just using the forum's search function and reading through a few threads about buying similar gear might already provide all the answers).

Quote
* People who lack the confidence to negotiate
* People with limited options - e.g local country pricing which tends to make the brand name stuff even more expensive.
* People with limited buying power.

Negotiating is a skill, it comes naturally to some, some people learn it, and some people just can't do it.

You don't have to be a tough skilled negotiator or order the complete outfit for a new research institute, most of the time its enough just ask for a better price. It can also be useful to mention if some other big brand does have some attractive offer you would consider, or say that you're almost convinced and you'd buy in an instant if only options <include some option you want here> were included. That often works even if it's just for a single instrument (and if not, just say "no thanks" and ask another sales droid, sales usually count towards their performance so they want to sell even if its at a lower price). Big brands have pretty good margins and a lot of flexibility, but if you don't ask then they will offer you RRP only.

The only exception to this is Tek, who seems to be stuck in a parallel universum where their products aren't unattractive and their sales aren't in decline, as they're pretty inflexible regarding prices (and that even for large orders). Typical for a Danaher company.

The other rule for buying expensive test gear is to get loaners from all suitable vendors and give them a spin in real-world situations before committing to buy. All big brands should have loaner scopes available they can leave with you at least for a day or two, and if you like it there's often even the chance to buy the loaner (which will usually come with most/all options) for a pretty good price if you wish to do so.

Of course that leaves out the B-brands like Rigol and Siglent as they sell through retailers only (no direct sales) and don't offer loaners.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2015, 11:33:27 am by Wuerstchenhund »
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #18 on: October 15, 2015, 11:41:57 am »
My point is, if it is not as competitive at least in US market

Not sure where you get the idea, R&S has a pretty large presence in the US, from the major broadcasters to the US Air Force.
Yes, but R&S is competitive in the US with another type of test gear, not oscilloscopes. In my experience with two top universities in Brazil, in my current company in US and from some friends that work in defense, R&S only has a strong presence in high end Network Analyzers, Spectrum Analyzers and some other RF wizardry test gear. I also have seen around some good RF Signal generators from them.

why bother since for the same spec sheet they sell for 3x the price.
Not really. Only lazy people pay sticker price, everything else comes down to negotiations. All big brands generally offer pretty good incentives to those that ask for them.
I know from my experience that, if you mention you work for "X" (a good customer for T&M gear), the spiel changes radically, as you are perceived as putting a good word in your company. A lone developer which has the potential to buy "one" unit (maybe two) will always have limited options when negotiating with a manufacturer.

As I said, you get what you pay for  :)
The price/performance ratio of Rigol's gear (especially from the NA clearance bin) is still very hard to be beaten. Sometimes eBay manages to have really good test gear at a reasonable price, but it is a more risky scenario due to the absence of warranty in most cases.
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Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #19 on: October 15, 2015, 07:29:24 pm »
Not sure where you get the idea, R&S has a pretty large presence in the US, from the major broadcasters to the US Air Force.
Yes, but R&S is competitive in the US with another type of test gear, not oscilloscopes. In my experience with two top universities in Brazil, in my current company in US and from some friends that work in defense, R&S only has a strong presence in high end Network Analyzers, Spectrum Analyzers and some other RF wizardry test gear. I also have seen around some good RF Signal generators from them.

Well, as I said above, R&S started making their own scopes (i.e. not Hameg) around 2009, that's just 6 years ago! It shouldn't really surprise anyone that after 6 years they have not quite the market share in scopes as others who sell scopes for over half a century.

Quote
I know from my experience that, if you mention you work for "X" (a good customer for T&M gear), the spiel changes radically, as you are perceived as putting a good word in your company. A lone developer which has the potential to buy "one" unit (maybe two) will always have limited options when negotiating with a manufacturer.

These days that doesn't make much difference, unless you're someone in a higher management position who can actually influence procurement decisions.

Quote
The price/performance ratio of Rigol's gear (especially from the NA clearance bin) is still very hard to be beaten. Sometimes eBay manages to have really good test gear at a reasonable price, but it is a more risky scenario due to the absence of warranty in most cases.

Not sure if that is really hard to beat:

http://www.rigolna.com/clearance/

"Clearance items come with a 90 day warranty. Other than warranty repair issues all sales are final. They operate within specifications, but may or may not have up to date calibration certificates."

That's actually pretty poor, I guess Rigol doesn't have much trust in their devices. Plus the prices don't look that great to me, for example the DG1062z is less than $100 cheaper than a brand new one which comes with 3yrs warranty and valid calibration. The DS4022 is roughly $600 cheaper than a new one, again that's not much savings for an used scope with just 3 months warranty. Compared with what you can usually get from clearance sales of the big brands Rigol's savings are pretty abysmal.

I'm also not sure it's any better than a used big brand device from ebay, as for those I can usually easily buy warranty or support for not much money. For example, you can buy some used LeCroy scope on ebay, send it in for calibration and if it passes then you can buy one, two, three or more years of manufacturer warranty for it, i.e. you get the same coverage as with a brand new one. That works as long as the scope is within the main support cycle (7 years after that model is no longer sold).

Keysight offers something similar (repair agreements) for products that are within their support period, again with one, two or three years of coverage, taking care should anything fail. I recently bought an 33522B AWG on ebay, and a 3yr repair agreement for roughly 1/3rd of the price of a new one in basic config (while the one from ebay came with several options), while offering me the same security as a brand new one.

The second hand big brand instrument will also very likely perform much better, will be generally well supported, and can be calibrated by any professional calibration facility to any standard (not many cal labs touch Rigol kit, not only due to the lack of appropriate documentation).
« Last Edit: October 15, 2015, 07:48:36 pm by Wuerstchenhund »
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #20 on: October 15, 2015, 08:08:32 pm »
Well, as I said above, R&S started making their own scopes (i.e. not Hameg) around 2009, that's just 6 years ago! It shouldn't really surprise anyone that after 6 years they have not quite the market share in scopes as others who sell scopes for over half a century.
Well, we are talking about scopes on this thread, right? ;)

These days that doesn't make much difference, unless you're someone in a higher management position who can actually influence procurement decisions.
Your experience is different than mine.

Not sure it's any better than a used big brand device from ebay, as for those I can usually easily buy warranty or support for not much money.
Perhaps I should have clarified that in my last paragraph; repair plans are easily amortized if you use the equipment professionally, it is a lot of money for hobbyist or personal purchases.

In your example, the repair plan will set you back $1.1k on your 33522B (1/3 of the price, according to Keysight). One could argue that, if you deem that brand so dependable, why spend so much in a repair plan?  O0

The second hand big brand instrument will also very likely perform much better (...)
That is where you lose me. While I agree with your overall comments about the repairability, brand alone does not mean dependability and performance anymore. The marketplace is changing, and it is not unusual to see comparably priced equipment losing ground in features, "featured bugs" and even build quality.
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Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline AndyC_772

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #21 on: October 15, 2015, 08:53:34 pm »
Are there any suggestions for a low cost active probe? The Rigol ones are just too expensive, so I might end up getting a Rigol to Tek adapter, and use a cheap second hand Tek (FET) one. Forget about the ASIC based ones, they are just way too expensive. The Rigol 1.5GHz one costs $4200!

The calibration certificate that came with my Keysight N2795A probe says it has a measured bandwidth of over 2 GHz.

Not bad for a "1 GHz" probe IMHO, and much cheaper than the Rigol.

I wonder if there's an adapter available?

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #22 on: October 16, 2015, 05:39:11 am »
Not sure it's any better than a used big brand device from ebay, as for those I can usually easily buy warranty or support for not much money.
Perhaps I should have clarified that in my last paragraph; repair plans are easily amortized if you use the equipment professionally, it is a lot of money for hobbyist or personal purchases. [/quote]

It's not expensive, in fact, these repair agreements are often surprisingly cheap.

Quote
In your example, the repair plan will set you back $1.1k on your 33522B (1/3 of the price, according to Keysight).

Not sure what makes you think a repair agreement for a $3600 device is $1.1k (which would be ludicrous):
https://service.keysight.com/infoline/public/product-service.aspx?laf=mya&pn=33522B&lc=eng&cc=US

A single year costs a staggering $72. I'm in the UK, and I just paid a bit under £300 for 3yrs repair agreements for my 33522B and my E5810A GPIB LAN controller, both bought very cheaply from the US via ebay.

Quote
One could argue that, if you deem that brand so dependable, why spend so much in a repair plan?  O0

Because, as an engineer, I am well aware that any piece of complex electronics can fail, and the repair agreement is a very cheap insurance against that risk. That means I got the same protection as with a brand new device, while paying an overall much lower price.

Quote
The second hand big brand instrument will also very likely perform much better (...)
That is where you lose me. While I agree with your overall comments about the repairability, brand alone does not mean dependability and performance anymore. The marketplace is changing, and it is not unusual to see comparably priced equipment losing ground in features, "featured bugs" and even build quality.

I deal with a lot of test equipment as part of my job, and aside from the LeCroy WaveRunner Xi (which has a pretty poor build quality) I can't recall when I came across a big brand instrument with inferior build quality.

As to features, B-brands like Rigol tend to add features in a check box ticking exercise without thinking about the implementation. The best example is the sample memory of their scopes. 140M in the DS6000 sounds like a lot, it's much more than the big brands offer, and it looks really great on the spec sheet. But the sad reality is that you can't do a lot with it as there are no search or analysis tools to find stuff like runts or glitches in memory. And manually searching through 140M of recordings is absolutely painful. Plus, despite the large memory, FFT is limited to a measly 2048 points according to Rigol (although the owner of the DS000 told me it has been increased to 16k points in a recent firmware update), which is really nothing else than embarrassing (most DSOs in the late '90s had better FFT). Big brand scopes in the same class come with less sample memory but they do have tools to make better use of it, plus FFT uses a lot more points, and in the lab that's a much bigger advantage than having a huge sample memory with no tools. Other features (math, trigger, measurements) of the DS6000 are pretty basic, more akin to what you'll find in modern bottom-of-the-barrel scopes.

The other problem with B-brands is that they often tend to implement features in a half-working state. Just check the threads for any Rigol gear (DS2000, DS1000z, DS4000), almost all of their products come with non-working or half-working features, plus a ton of other bugs.

Big brands scopes may not come with some sticker features as a very large sample memory, but they generally come with better implementations of things that don't look sexy on the spec sheet but make a scope much more useful on the bench. They will generally bring a product on the market when its in a mature state, and any bugs that slipped through testing are usually fixed pretty quickly.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2015, 05:42:44 am by Wuerstchenhund »
 

Offline Armxnian

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #23 on: October 16, 2015, 05:52:47 am »
Let us know the range of power measurement of the FFT function on the 6102. My 1054z only goes up to 50kdBV. Might not be enough to measure a local supernova.
 

Online coppice

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Re: Just ordered a Rigol DS6102
« Reply #24 on: October 16, 2015, 06:09:11 am »
Today I asked my mentor who purchased 100k worth of Tek gears a couple years ago. He got over 60% off!!!

He got a 10Gsps/2GHz DPO w/most options enabled, two 200MHz DPO, a bunch of probes including HV and current clamps, a bunch of signal generators, a couple of 5.5 and 6.5 digit multimeters and 6 programmable PSUs, all for only 40K.

I indeed need to practice my negotiation skill.
They usually like to offer you a lot of extra kit, rather than a big discount, so they can keep the total sales value as high as possible.
 


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