Rigol reliability

[nctnico]

The days of Tektronix are long gone. When needing equipment I don't even look at their offerings even though I have owned several Tektronix scopes. Lecroy and R&S OTOH are missing from your list of A-brands.

[saturation]

So comparing it today they're down to 424.  That's 43 scopes is about 2 business days and today isn't over yet.  FWIW.

I saw Dave's review of the GWInstek 1000B series fairly late and checked into scope prices at tequipment.net last week.  Naturally, many DSO in the entry level are compared against Rigols 1000's these days.

They had ~800 1054Z in stock on May 14, and yesterday it was down to 467.  That's amazing if true.  At that rate they should be out by end of May 2016. 

Regardless of its problems, it striking how many scopes they sell and I presume, reflects overall general interest in electronics at the entry level or hobbyist end. 

For later reference here's a snapshot from yesterday.

[Fungus]

If you want an industrial grade instruments, save more $$$ and buy some Keysight gear.

Oh, a Keysight fanboi...

Your Rigol is good value for the money.  In comparison to Keysight it's an entry level toy. I realize that may be painful to hear.

Not at all.

On the other hand, maybe you're just much smarter than the professionals who overwhelmingly favor Keysight (I have never seen a Rigol in a professional environment, have you?).

Another keysight fanboi? 

On the other hand, Of course, I could be wrong, and even if money were not an object you'd choose Rigol over Keysight for some inexplicable reason. Is that the case?

No, but when people coming in here asking about "Rigol" or "Which oscilloscope is best for $400" then there's no need to go on and on about other brands which cost five to ten times as much and look down on them for buying a Rigol.

I realize it may be painful to hear, but some people really do just want to know what the best value low-end oscilloscope is. So far, nobody's come up with a better option than a hacked Rigol DS1054Z.

And, getting back on topic: Rigol reliability does seem up to par. You can obsess all day long about the hanful of bugs in the firmware but they're well built and do a fine job of displaying wiggly lines on a screen. The difference between not owning an oscilloscope and owning a cheapo Rigol is night and day. Don't deny people that just because you think a "professional" would turn his nose up at one.

PS: Dave's a professional and he likes them.

[nctnico]

Dave's daytime job is being a vlogger so whatever looks good on video works for him! 
Anyway you can still argue whether to spend $400 on a cheap tool (with several severe shortcomings you really just can't ignore like only decoding what is on screen, measurements which don't work, short FFT, etc) or save more cash and get a real tool. If you go for the real tool afterwards then the $400 is just wasted. From my own experience I know going for the cheap tool is mighty tempting but if you are serious about electronics a good tool might be a much better investment even though it takes longer to get the cash. Making do with one of the sub $100 pocket-scopes in the mean time is another alternative.

[Fungus]

(with several severe shortcomings you really just can't ignore like only decoding what is on screen, measurements which don't work, short FFT, etc)

It may be painful to hear, but some people really don't do complex FFTs or look at maximum slew rates. They just want to see wiggly lines.

And ... to get a better, 4-channel 'scope with serial decoding option is going to cost you at least four times as much as a DS1054Z (I say "4 channels" because a 2-channel 'scope is painfully limited when it comes to looking at anything more than RS232).

Is decoding more than what's on screen really worth $1200 extra? I think you'll have a tough time selling that to anybody.

[Fungus]

Your Rigol is good value for the money.  In comparison to Keysight it's an entry level toy. I have never seen a Rigol in a professional environment, have you?

Maybe you can go and comfort the guy in this thread:

"I havent been lucky with Agilent/Keysight at all. In the last 3 years, this is the thrid time a brand new equipment fails on me"

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/oh-no!-i'm-never-buying-any-agilent-keysight-equiment-ever-again!

[madires]

Actually it's quite handy to have a cheap tool and an expensive professional one. For some tasks I wouldn't use the professional one, it's simply too valuable.

[nctnico]

(with several severe shortcomings you really just can't ignore like only decoding what is on screen, measurements which don't work, short FFT, etc)

It may be painful to hear, but some people really don't do complex FFTs or look at maximum slew rates. They just want to see wiggly lines.

And ... to get a better, 4-channel 'scope with serial decoding option is going to cost you at least four times as much as a DS1054Z (I say "4 channels" because a 2-channel 'scope is painfully limited when it comes to looking at anything more than RS232).

Is decoding more than what's on screen really worth $1200 extra? I think you'll have a tough time selling that to anybody.

It is not $1200 extra. $1200 buys you a 4 channel scope which does 200MHz AND does everything the DS1000Z promises to do but fails to deliver. To me spending $1200 instead of $400 to get a tool which works is well worth the money any day. It's not like you'll need FFT or decoding every day but if you need it and it has so much limitations that it is just useless then you might be much better of by spending the $400 on a used digital oscilloscope and get 300MHz of bandwidth (or even more) and do without decoding.

[julian1]

The smug elitism on show in this thread is certainly not endearing me as a relative beginner to Keysight or any of the other higher-end brands being mentioned.

I pulled my Rigol 1054z apart and was impressed with the build quality - except for the damn noisy fan - easily solved with a quieter substitute.

I purchased fluke/agilent power-supplies and bench meters for the build, price and performance. I chose rigol and siglent for other equipment on the same criteria.

Dave's review of the "made in China" Keithley DMM, which eclipsed the Keysight alternative on build demonstrates that manufacturing origin is no bar to quality. 

[tautech]

The smug elitism on show in this thread is certainly not endearing me as a relative beginner to Keysight or any of the other higher-end brands being mentioned.

You'll find most recent threads on scopes demonstrate this ongoing pissing contest and many thrive on it. 

My scope's better than your scope....
No it isn't
Yes it is
No it isn't
Yes it is

Rinse and repeat.

Fact is each have their strong points and weaknesses.......

[nctnico]

Fact is each have their strong points and weaknesses.......

No, the fact is some equipment lives up to it's specifications and other doesn't. We didn't even got to the point of strong and weak points!

[MT]

The only thing Rigol has going for them is the hackability. If the DS1000Z couldn't be hacked they would not sell a single unit. I'm wondering
how fast the stock goes on other DS1000Z models so I just checked Tequipment and they have 10 units at most for the other 1000Z models.

I reason similar, it is the hack-ability that sells them, i learned that many other more expensive Rigolettos can also be hacked
so it seams this is a deliberate marketing/sales plan. We enable you to upgrade for free if you accept all our bugs and rotten
customer service. 

[rstofer]

$1200 for a hobby is too rich for me.  I had a problem with $400.  It's just a low end hobby, not nearly my #1 hobby.  A second scope just isn't worth any more than $400.

[Fungus]

To me spending $1200 instead of $400 to get a tool which works is well worth the money any day.

Yep, that's YOU.

It's not like you'll need FFT or decoding every day but if you need it

And ... if you turns out you don't need FFT then you wasted $800. $800 buys a lot of other stuff. You can have a proper power supply, a decent soldering iron, a second multimeter and a whole bunch of components to work with for $800. If you're a hobbyist just trying to have fun with electronics then spending $800 "just in case" makes no sense at all.

And even if you do need a more detailed FFT, you might still have wasted $800:

http://hackaday.com/2015/09/22/a-better-spectrum-analyzer-for-your-rigol-scope/

Anyway, I'm done with you. I've got better things to do. I've been called pig-headed many times but you win, you're better than me. Everybody's sick of listening to this crap and you're obviously blind to the real world.

From now on I'll just limit myself to telling other people to go ahead and buy/enjoy DS1054sZ. If you can find a single hobbyist who regrets buying one for non-specialized use then I'm all ears (and that's the only parameter that matters, IMHO)

[Gary350z]

I realize it may be painful to hear, but some people really do just want to know what the best value low-end oscilloscope is.

And, getting back on topic: Rigol reliability does seem up to par.

PS: Dave's a professional and he likes them.

Many good points Fungus. Thanks.

People argue too much about this here. For a hobbyist, if your needs are simple you get a $400 scope, if all you have is $400 you get a $400 scope, if you have money to burn you get a much better scope. If you really appreciate a $10,000 scope and can afford it, go for it. End of story!!!
Not all hobbyist are designing space shuttles at home.

Changing subjects. When watching youtube home electronics videos or pictures of peoples home benches on this forum, a lot of them have stacks of Fluke and Keysight bench multimeters, stacks or Keysight power supplies, $4000 scopes, spectrum analyzers, etc. This is some serious money.
The other day I counted 13 hand held multimeters on some guys shelf.   Who needs 13 multimeters!!!
"The Signal Path" guy has a half millon dollar scope in his house. (nothing against "The Signal Path", he's great)
I'm just saying this is some serious money for a hobbyist.

[tautech]

Changing subjects. When watching youtube home electronics videos or pictures of peoples home benches on this forum, a lot of them have stacks of Fluke and Keysight bench multimeters, stacks or Keysight power supplies, $4000 scopes, spectrum analyzers, etc. This is some serious money.
The other day I counted 13 hand held multimeters on some guys shelf.   Who needs 13 multimeters!!!
"The Signal Path" guy has a half millon dollar scope in his house. (nothing against "The Signal Path", he's great)
I'm just saying this is some serious money for a hobbyist.

There was recent discussion on this matter in this thread that may enlighten you as to just why.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/keysight-giving-scopes-to-youtubers/

[Smith]

I really ask myself how many people really bought such an expensive scope for home use. Most people in electronics I know can never afford a 1K scope or up. Lets be honest, most of us have wives, kids, morgages, and bills to pay, or are still in school without big bucks to spend.

I have the luxury of having quite some electronics and repair knowledge, so most of my gear was bought or givin to be broken. This was the only way for me to get all the gear I have. Without this I would seriously consider a Rigol scope.

[nctnico]

I really ask myself how many people really bought such an expensive scope. Most people in electronics I know can never afford a 1K scope or up. Lets be honest, most of us have wives, kids, morgages, and bills to pay, or are still in school without big bucks to spend.

You have to see getting good tools as an investment. Doing measurements (or anything else) more quickly/efficiently means more time for other things. For example: I bought my first DSO and high end logic analyzer (both used) in my early 20's when I was still studying even though they where in  the 1k to 2k euro ball-park in today's money each. Those tools helped me a lot to solve problems / learn things more quickly. The logic analyser came in particulary handy for my graduation project where I had to debug a huge amount of code running in a microcontroller (back then internal flash/ram wasn't commnon so you could pick up code & data from the external address/data bus connecting the flash and ram). If I didn't had the logic analyser I think I would have spend at least a month longer because the some problems where not very obvious (like a bug in the C compiler). Working on my graduation project for a month longer would have meant waiting a month longer before getting a job. All in all the logic analyser paid itself back twice by just using it for the graduation project.

[Gary350z]

Changing subjects. When watching youtube home electronics videos or pictures of peoples home benches on this forum, a lot of them have stacks of Fluke and Keysight bench multimeters, stacks or Keysight power supplies, $4000 scopes, spectrum analyzers, etc. This is some serious money.
The other day I counted 13 hand held multimeters on some guys shelf.   Who needs 13 multimeters!!!
"The Signal Path" guy has a half millon dollar scope in his house. (nothing against "The Signal Path", he's great)
I'm just saying this is some serious money for a hobbyist.

There was recent discussion on this matter in this thread that may enlighten you as to just why.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/keysight-giving-scopes-to-youtubers/

I've already read that discussion, but thanks.

[Smith]

You have to see getting good tools as an investment.

I do know everything about good tools, debugging and repairing stuff is a big part of my job. I know what good (reliable) tools can do, and I also know what bad (unreliable) tools can do.  The problem is, expensive tools don't mean they are better or easier or faster to use.  We recently replaced a >30K Tek with a 6K Rigol. The Rigol is smaller, faster to setup, is faster in updates, faster to boot.

But we are getting a bit off topic, the topic is Rigol's reliability.

I had enough problems with Keithley, Fluke, Tektronix and Weller gear. These are known as A brand, but I had the stupidest problems with them. We had about 50% of our Weller gear failed within 3 years (expensive stations). Our brand new Fluke thermal camera has more issues than you can count. We had an expensive Tek scope repaired multiple times, the problem still exists. We had a Keithley electrometer fail after about 1,5 years of use, and the repair took months.  We also have lots of cheaper gear, but we never had any problem with them.

[wraper]

You have to see getting good tools as an investment.

I do know everything about good tools, debugging and repairing stuff is a big part of my job. I know what good (reliable) tools can do, and I also know what bad (unreliable) tools can do.  The problem is, expensive tools don't mean they are better or easier or faster to use.  We recently replaced a >30K Tek with a 6K Rigol. The Rigol is smaller, faster to setup, is faster in updates, faster to boot.

But we are getting a bit off topic, the topic is Rigol's reliability.

Then you had a wrong tool for the job. Of course if you get expensive advanced scope, it will be more difficult to use for simple everyday job than some simpler scope.

[Smith]

That's true, that's why I replaced it. I still wonder why they got the 30K Tek for a basic measurement in the first place.

[nctnico]

I had enough problems with Keithley, Fluke, Tektronix and Weller gear.

I never wrote you need to get A-brand gear because A-brand gear is always good because it is more expensive or just has the A-brand logo on it! I only wrote that spending a bit more can buy you a piece of equipment which has more mature features so will provide better value for money in the long run. I'm also not a fan of the pray-gear approach where you buy a piece of equipment and have to pray & hope they eventually fix the issues and complete the promised functionality in a next firmware release.

[Smith]

I never wrote you need to get A-brand gear because A-brand gear is always good because it is more expensive or just has the A-brand logo on it!

It was a general remark about brands, it was not meant towards you.

Some people expect all kind of problems with non-A brand brand gear like Rigol, and expect nothing but perfection when buying A brands. It was just meant to show that I had my share of troubles with A-brands. I also have lots of cheap gear still working perfectly after years of use and abuse. Years ago I was just like that, distrusting all "lesser" brands. The main problem I faced was budget. Sometimes your budget does not permit A-brands, and you have to choose between a lesser brand, or nothing at all. I quickly learned most of them work just as well, or even better.

[Fungus]

If you really appreciate a $10,000 scope and can afford it, go for it. End of story!!!

Why stop there?

A $20,000 scope is even better! People who own $20,000 'scopes probably look at $2,000 'scopes and think they're "toys", too.

Dave had a video with a $140,000 'scope. People who own those probably look at $20,000 'scopes and think they're junk - totally unsuitable for real work.

And guess what? If you own a Rigol DS1054Z you can look down on all the people who only have DSO Quads, etc., no problem!