Rigol MSO7000 Unboxing & First Impressions

[bugi]

What strikes me as odd is that Rigol choose to put a row of buttons next to the screen (and Dave is using them!). What is the purpose of the touch screen then? The space for the row of buttons could have been used to un-clutter the space for the other buttons.

Gloves and touchscreens don't always work together well. (And I do not mean thick winter stuff.) Also, it is easier to clean up a dirty button than a dirty screen, should one not be wearing the gloves and has extra dirty fingers (e.g. working on a piece of electronics that contains lubricants/chemicals/accumulated dirt over years). And, in certain cases good buttons can work faster than a typical touchscreen (i.e. higher rate of actions e.g. when going through a list of selections); no idea if such case would apply or be useful on this Rigol, though.

[Tom45]

Reading through the Rigol 7000 datasheet I see that the built in digital voltmeter only has 3 bit resolution and the "High Precision" frequency counter is only 6 bits. 

[rsjsouza]

Excellent video, Dave. Thanks!

A few years ago Dave reviewed a GW Instek oscilloscope that, just like this one, was functionally sound and capable but people focused on its looks. As I said then: if buttons, fonts and looks are the major criticism, then Rigol should be quite proud with their product. I see a lot of details and button/menu organization that are quite similar to my DS4000, thus it is possible they want to maintain this familiarity intact (and yes, I also find a bit odd on my DS4014 the trigger "Mode" have a specialized button).

It seemed a quite capable device with reasonable lag (keysight's are another league, but they carry other limitations by using their old ASIC) but there were not many details on this quick first impressions to make a definitive call on that. Rigol is most probably placing this product to replace both the DS4000 and DS6000 lines.

The touch interface seemed quite responsive and reasonably thought (the virtual keypad saves a ton of front fascia realstate, although it is not as nice as a real one) and I see that the buttons surrounding the screen are a great welcome addition if I am not willing to use the screen. Unfortunately Dave forgot to test the touch trigger capability. For a first implementation, that is not bad.

I see a fail in acknowledging the USB pendrive. It seems that it is running some sort of Windows judging by the C:\ drive selection, thus I don't know how the pendrive was formatted or if it is a true OS or hardware fail.

Basic memory is quite similar to the DS4000, which comes with 140Mpts default, as well as the probe auto-detection and the digital interface connector - a plus in my opinion.The true test would be to use all that with decoders, where the DS4000 fails to do well on the larger time/div settings or delayed trigger. Another excellent test would be specialized triggers (which are limited on the DS4000) and pattern searchability (non-existing on DS4000). However, the flexibility of the LA interface and its digital and analog arrangements seems well put together.

Other than that, it is always a matter of price versus performance. A hefty $2.7k for a 100MHz version seems somewhat high (similar to what a DS4014 cost at release time), but with option bundling that may start to make sense when compared to other manufacturers. Obviously that, if the Riglol works, then this becomes unbeatable.

[Hydrawerk]

My Agilent DSOX2002A made in 2012 works with a 32GB Patriot Supersonic USB drive.

[Hydrawerk]

Siglent can make a clean, non-confusing front panel.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/new-rigol-ds7000/?action=dlattach;attach=448582;image
Picture by Pinkus.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/new-rigol-ds7000/msg1588084/#msg1588084

[Wolfgang]

Well, to me it looks like a logic extrapolation of RIGOL designs from the past.

- its not a mass market entry "toy" like the enormously successful DS1054 series
- they want to play with the big boys now
- they now have a price range that is not too much below Keysight, Tek or Rohde Equipment (you can get quite some discounts there, RIGOL does not rebate to the same extent)
- they try to provide the features their competetitors have, but the do it the first time, and you can see that
- ergonomics has never been the top priority of RIGOL. Design as such is probably done by amateurs or not considered important
- Uglyness is a matter of taste, unfortunately. They can always claim that as long functionality is OK its irrelevant. On the other hand, its clear that an uglier design does not cost more than a good one, and a good one probably sells  more units.
- The scope is brand new, and it contains a lot of new functionality. You can expect that bugs are common, and it will take about a year to fix the
most prominent ones. RIGOL has deteriorated regarding bug fixing and problem removal, probably due to lack of resources and too much market success.
- They copied their pricing policy from other vendors - base unit plus a lot of options packaged in a way so you have to buy several (e.g., look at the protocols), not just one covering most users needs.

My advice:
- Dont buy it now.
- Wait for full reviews.
- Read forums for all kinds of problems, updates and fixes.
- Always compare prices on what you have to pay including options and vendor rebates.
- You max expect that they want to server price-insensitive brand-loyal people first. Only buy if you are desparate or dumb.
- Wait at least for the first price correction round (just think of their electronic loads)
- Test before you buy !!!
- Also test their support during the test period before you buy !!!
- If you can, test two instruments from different vendors side by side.





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[Circlotron]

What I see as part of the problem with the front panel design is the line borders around groups of controls. Functionally at least, they need to be simple rectangles, perhaps with rounded corners as per older HP stuff. What we have though is a wiggly squiggle for a line border, and there is no real coherence from one to the other. It is art for art’s sake, not as an aid to function. It might be compared to serifs on lettering that is meant to guide the eye along the line of text from one letter to the next. In this case though the wiggly line just confuses the eye and does not achieve its purpose of grouping a family of controls very well. The mishmash of different shaped buttons doesn’t help either.

[Andrey_irk]

Reading through the Rigol 7000 datasheet I see that the built in digital voltmeter only has 3 bit resolution and the "High Precision" frequency counter is only 6 bits. 

They are probably talking about digits and not bits. As the ADC has 8 bits - it gives us 256 counts or 3 (2.5, if you prefer) digits. So obviously, it is a mistake.
Although I don't understand the usefulness of such a "voltmeter". It would've made more sense if they implemented a hardware DC voltmeter with at least 2000 counts so you won't have to use your DMM unless you really need to measure something accurately.
I saw the same thing on R&S 2000 series scopes, but it was a bit more useful as they had 10bit ADCs.

[Wolfgang]

Google translate is overused, especially in China. My native tongue is German, and the quality of manuals in German translated from Chinese is a permanent source of unintended humour, all much worse than English. This goes for all chinese manufacturers.

I propose to open an "idiotic manual thread" with a hitparade for the best intellectual failures.

[EEVblog]

Bet the reason they do not see the USB drive Dave plugged in is because it is too large, and they are using an older Linux kernel that does not support over 8G drives natively.

Nope, it's a 2GB stick

[tautech]

Bet the reason they do not see the USB drive Dave plugged in is because it is too large, and they are using an older Linux kernel that does not support over 8G drives natively.

Nope, it's a 2GB stick

FAT32 ?

[EEVblog]

- Test before you buy !!!
- If you can, test two instruments from different vendors side by side.

Yes.
If you are paying this sort of money, get a loaner unit from the local rep for a few days and try it.

[xrunner]

Siglent can make a clean, non-confusing front panel.

It's a lot better, and they don't try to use two shades of BLUE for the scope inputs/traces like Rigol does - I hate that - it's the same colors as a DS1054Z. 

[EEVblog]

Bet the reason they do not see the USB drive Dave plugged in is because it is too large, and they are using an older Linux kernel that does not support over 8G drives natively.

Nope, it's a 2GB stick

FAT32 ?

Turns out it was NTFS and it's a 4GB stick.
But formatting with FAT32, FAT, or exFAT does not work, not recognised at all.

[EEVblog]

A 1GB FAT stick worked, but shows up as two drives!
The Quick button auto saved to the stick instead of internal which is nice.
I like how the screen shot shows the version and build, but no capture date

[EEVblog]

What strikes me as odd is that Rigol choose to put a row of buttons next to the screen (and Dave is using them!). What is the purpose of the touch screen then?

Plenty of uses - keypad, zone trigger, pan and zoom, moving and closing floating windows

[EEVblog]

it is a single take, unedited, unprepared unboxing and just dicking around with it. If you do not like this style of video do not watch it.

@Dave: I quite liked the single-take approach, very watchable for my taste. But when you do similar videos going forward, could you improve the audio?

I assume this was simply captured via the in-camera microphone.
[/quoute]

External Rode mic mounted on cam, auto gain. Yes, not the best for a lot of walking around.
I think the low cut filter accidentally on.
Lapel mics are not the savior here, they also have directionality issues as the head moves.

[bitseeker]

I like how the screen shot shows the version and build, but no capture date

That supposed build date sure looks like the screen capture date and time to me, relative to the clock in the lower-right corner.

[tautech]

I like how the screen shot shows the version and build, but no capture date

That supposed build date sure looks like the screen capture date and time to me, relative to the clock in the lower-right corner.

Yeah somethings not right there, sure the USB drive looks like it's partitioned but unless you open one there's no idea if a capture has been made.
No size for any of the drives ?   

[Dubbie]

Siglent can make a clean, non-confusing front panel.

Yes, the Siglent one looks like it was designed by a grown up.

The Rigol one looks like the winner of a "Design your own scope" contest for 8 year olds.

[Bud]

The Rigol one looks like the winner of a "Design your own scope" contest for 8 year olds.

I am sure same applies to their schematic design.

[Hydron]

What strikes me as odd is that Rigol choose to put a row of buttons next to the screen (and Dave is using them!). What is the purpose of the touch screen then?

Plenty of uses - keypad, zone trigger, pan and zoom, moving and closing floating windows

I can confirm that an onscreen keypad/keyboard via touchscreen is super handy (from my experience with the RTB2k). Saves huge amounts of time for both things like naming saved data files, and (more importantly) allows for direct numerical entry of things like trigger holdoff, probe attenuation, V/div, horizontal and vertical position etc etc. Even if everything else was button/knob driven it's worth having a touchscreen just for that (though it's usefulness goes far beyond that). I find using the touchscreen for menus etc rather than soft buttons (none on the RTB2k) is fine, so personally I'd get rid of them and spend the space on more screen area, though they certainly don't hurt (you're always going to have some duplication of functions on something like a touchscreen scope).

[nctnico]

It is also interesting to see Rigol still hasn't hired someone to get the English texts right (in a way they are clear and understandable).

[BravoV]

11k $ for Rigol

That's a significant point. Though Rigol have been around a while, and are probably the best of the Chinese brands I do wonder who is going to spend that kind of money on a scope that's not from one of the long-established companies with local offices, service centres etc.
At the low end these things matter a lot less, but once you start talking more serious investment, it becomes about more then just the product and feature set.
Time will tell....

Really curious at what price level that it will make users at this market segment starting to consider it ?

I guess Rigol ain't stupid, as they can go gung-ho sell at cost or even loss just to penetrate certain segment.

[iMo]

Based on my own experience with largest int IT vendors the number of people (the actual "doers") is rather small with product development. My bet the 7000 series has been developed/created by 2-3 guys max. They spent 4-8 years with it. All inclusive - box design, electronics/Asic/pcb, sw, testing, documentation. The other xx thousands employees are usually with production and sales/marketing.