That's my biggest issue is finding the make or break, I'm looking for something to own for the next few years as my main scope. I dont care about the FFT since I own a spectrum analyzer. The one issue I have with the keysight, it's an agilent and is old. While they still sell them, I feel as if the design is outdated and I don't want a few months down the road see that keysight is releasing a replacement model at a healthy cost. The thing about this model, I calculated the original cost + options installed and I would be paying less than 50% of the list of price which is good. I do enjoy my siglent generator but I still remember the day I plugged it in and had to spend some time trying to change the language to english instead of chinese. The bode plot feature which was announced on the 1000 series was very attractive to me for testing various audio and communications circuits. The problem is a 100 MHz 1000 series with gen is $1200 vs $1500 for the used model I'm looking at. When I saw it available on the siglent, that's when I got interested in the model but I'm still unsure. I definitely don't want an entry scope but being a college student, I can't just spend a few thousand on a scope right now. At work I use a Tek MSO3054 which is amazing but way out of my current budget range, so I'm looking for the in between I guess. I also own an old scope with logic analyzer, which I rarely use. Most modern stuff I do usually is 3 wire or 2 wire interfaces. Most of my time is spent in lower frequencies for embedded systems, audio, and communications. (I mainly work on power line communications for my research which is around 100kHz). If I ever need to work on higher frequencies like 2m and 70cm bands, I have a very old yokogawa for that. My main goal is to get a good quality 4 channel scope which can give me accurate measurements, a big enough screen where I can easily view my 4 channels, and be worth keeping on the bench for a few years before I have upgrade money for something higher. Also to add if I'm already going to be paying $1000+ for a siglent or rigol I would probably go brand name and get the used keysight.
If I would outline exactly what features I want/need:
-4 Channels
-Large display compared to the entry level scopes
-UART/I2C/SPI triggering
-Standard Math Functions
-USB connectivity, ie. keysight has excel plugins and such which are super useful. Even the rigol had a way to capture images
-Simple UI, a big turn off of my yokogawa is i need to go through many menues to accomplish simple features
-Similar to the UI, should be easy to use, shouldn't be a hassle to take some quick measurements.
Extra features that can influence purchase:
-Frequency analysis, bode plot: I'm pretty sure this is a newer feature in scopes but I can definitely utilize it. If the 2000 series had this, I would have probably pulled the trigger.
-Logic Analysis: While not 100% necessary, I do some FPGA work and it would be an extra feature to have. If the scope is less and comes with this compared to ones without it, it might be a better choice.
-VGA out - For a 22 year old, I'm pretty blind I guess. It would be nice to connect a monitor to really view signals, I do this at work with my Tek MSO3054 and it's great.
FWIW, when I went through this evaluation process a couple of years ago I looked at every manufacturer. I have Engineer friends at HP/Agilent/Keysight and they were adamant that I was not going to own anything but Keysight, so the pressure was on! But ultimately one of the biggest deciding factors was the amount of memory... the Keysight and Tek scopes just seem to go really shallow in the memory department, whereas Rigol (the brand I ultimately selected) had - by comparison - enormous memory depth that enabled types of tests and data gathering that the others either couldn't do or required very expensive memory upgrades to enable.
Memory is cheap these days. I don't know why the "big guys" go so shallow on it. But doing so cost them at least one sale (mine), and that was even with the social pressure of my friends really leaning on me.
BTW, Rigol support has been excellent. I really like my DS4000 series scope and would replace it if it failed tomorrow (after a fresh market analysis, of course!).
Hope this helps, YMMV, standard disclaimers, etc.
I will add and say the keysight I'm looking at comes with the memory upgrade package, I'm unsure if that really improves the memory depth but it has it.