Keysight E36312A first impressions

[capt bullshot]

So I've got the HPAK E36312A that I won at the "Power Your Bench" contest: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/contests/power-supply-contest!-free-e36312a/

Just arrived home, there she was. Couldn't wait to open the box. Don't turn it on, tear it apart time! OK, I only did a very basic teardown, opened the top cover and did some photos. Just enough to see the big toroidal transformer and the STM32F4 used as the main controller.

At first glance, the supply is very solid and well made. The enclosure looks and feels like good stuff. The display has a good contrast and wide enough viewing angle (sorry for the bad photos, I'll try better ones somewhen later).

BTW photos: you find them here: http://wunderkis.de/E36312A/rawpic/

Checked some output voltage values against a HP34401A - 4 digits bang on.

UI: Lots of menus to discover, basic settings like output voltage /current limit are dead simple and intuitive. Very nice: each one button for each channel on/off plus one for all together. Seperate buttons for each channel to select them for setting, numeric keypad entry - enter your desired voltage, press Enter, done!

Yes, it has a fan. Without a serious load it runs quiet.

Bootup time is okay (8 seconds from cold start, 6 from standby).

Now for the bad:
The output binding posts are in + - Earth + - + - order. IMO this is plain wrong and counterintuitive. Correct would be - + Earth - + - +
Afaik HPAK does this on all its power supplies this (wrong) way.

The supply does not have a real power switch. The button on the front is just a standby switch, turning off the display. In standby, the unit has a whopping 10W of power consumption, this is quite bad.

[nctnico]

There is an existing thread already!

[rsjsouza]

I received mine yesterday as well. First impressions are in a Youtube video on my channel (in portuguese, sorry) and the overall impression was similar to yours, minus the order of the output posts (I really don't mind).