Author Topic: Rigol reliability  (Read 35526 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline SteveyG

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 987
  • Country: gb
  • Soldering Equipment Guru
Re: Rigol reliability
« Reply #75 on: May 21, 2016, 03:57:53 pm »
Good luck with Tek, you'll very likely find out why these days Tek is pretty much bottom-of-the-barrel amongst the big brands, with outdated scope models that are slow like wading through molasses, like to lock up when they are under load and in some cases tend to crash.

These days if you want a good reliable scopes you buy Keysight, LeCroy and R&S.

I wouldn't include LeCrap in that list, they seem to be full of bugs. In the space of 30 minutes using a Wavesurfer 3000 series the "Cursors" process had crashed and needed to be restarted several times. Even the Keysight has a few issues - the 3000T series the other day was locking up when protocol decoding. Never had an issue with R&S though.
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/sdgelectronics/
Use code: “SDG5” to get 5% off JBC Equipment at Kaisertech
 

Offline madires

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7695
  • Country: de
  • A qualified hobbyist ;)
Re: Rigol reliability
« Reply #76 on: May 21, 2016, 04:12:19 pm »
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.

Exactly! You can't rely anymore on the assumption that an expensive tool of a well known brand has a high reliability, runs fine and has only minor bugs. When you're shopping for a new tool you have to check for any user feedback on that tool. The Internet is really great for that. I wouldn't spend several k EUR on something brand new. The risk to get a lemon is simply too high. For Rigol there are tons of reviews and details of known bugs. So anyone should be able to understand what he gets when buying a Rigol.

And the argument "but you get premium support" is moot. It depends on the company, the local office, the distributor and so on. You can poor support from an A brand manufacturer if you're in the wrong country. Or you could superb support from a tiny company nobody knows. The best way to find out which manufacturer has good support is also by feedback of other users/customers. That makes this forum very valuable. And some manufactures understood that and got a representative here. Or they read the feedback.

I got a DS1054Z for my hobbist needs. So far it's a good and reliable scope. It has its limits, but I accept them, especially when I consider the price. If I would have gone for an A brand scope with similar specs for 5 times the money, my expectations would be accordingly higher. But I can't see any A brand scope matching those expectations. Paying 5 times more to get 50% more/better features and performance?
 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3088
  • Country: gb
  • Able to drop by occasionally only
Re: Rigol reliability
« Reply #77 on: May 21, 2016, 09:30:57 pm »
Good luck with Tek, you'll very likely find out why these days Tek is pretty much bottom-of-the-barrel amongst the big brands, with outdated scope models that are slow like wading through molasses, like to lock up when they are under load and in some cases tend to crash.

These days if you want a good reliable scopes you buy Keysight, LeCroy and R&S.

I wouldn't include LeCrap in that list, they seem to be full of bugs. In the space of 30 minutes using a Wavesurfer 3000 series the "Cursors" process had crashed and needed to be restarted several times. Even the Keysight has a few issues - the 3000T series the other day was locking up when protocol decoding.

Without more details it's hard to say what the issue was but it sounds pretty much like a defective unit, because in the places I work there are now probably some 70 to 80 LeCroy WS3000 scopes (mostly WS3054), and none of them has shown any such problems. I also had one of the first WS3000 scopes in Europe after they came out in 2014, and even this very early firmware version didn't had any problem with cursors. In fact, the WS3000 Series has shown to be really robust and reliable, which  is the main reason we buy so many of them now.

We also have a few DSOX3054Ts (as it supports decode for some serial standards that the WS3k doesn't support), and I am not aware of any issue where the scope locks up during serial decode.

This aside, it's in general also a bit silly to conclude a device must be full of bugs from a single instrument failing at certain operations. More likely than not this is caused by a problem in your specific unit, and the "bug" is really just the result of a simple hardware defect. Confirming a firmware bug requires that the problem can be reproduced on more than just a single unit. Even the best manufacturers have a certain percentage of defects, and if you end up with a defective unit then the sensible thing is to contact the manufacturer and request a replacement. Unfortunately many people don't think that far, and scream "bugs!" where there aren't any. 

That is assuming the story is actually true, though, because, frankly, in my experience, when adolescent terminology like "LeCrap", "KeyShite" or "FuckTronix" are involved then the claims should be taken with a huge grain of salt as more often than not the content is usually hear-say at best and a load of BS at worst (and there are quite a few good examples of that in this forum). Such terminology doesn't exactly create an image of someone knowing his stuff about test equipment.

Quote
Never had an issue with R&S though.

So I guess you never have used early variants of the R&S RTO then, or the FSW, which had their own fair share of firmware problems. Nothing like the Rigols and Siglents, sure, but R&S is no stranger to annoying bugs.

And the argument "but you get premium support" is moot. It depends on the company, the local office, the distributor and so on. You can poor support from an A brand manufacturer if you're in the wrong country.

That is true, and support can be hit and miss if you have to rely on some distributor. If you're stuck in a country with little manufacturer presence then support will likely be limited.

Quote
The best way to find out which manufacturer has good support is also by feedback of other users/customers. That makes this forum very valuable. And some manufactures understood that and got a representative here. Or they read the feedback.

That works for hobbyists who are looking for some bottom-of-the-barrel/entry level gear which sells in large numbers to other hobbyists. The Rigol DS1054z is a good example for such cheap gear. It doesn't work for more expensive gear, though, simply because there usually aren't many reviews out there for expensive gear.

Also, not every review is necessarily well done or comes to the correct conclusion. There's a lot of noise out there.

Quote
I got a DS1054Z for my hobbist needs. So far it's a good and reliable scope. It has its limits, but I accept them, especially when I consider the price. If I would have gone for an A brand scope with similar specs for 5 times the money, my expectations would be accordingly higher. But I can't see any A brand scope matching those expectations. Paying 5 times more to get 50% more/better features and performance?

Fair enough. At the end of the day, for $400 the DS1054z is a great bargain, despite its flaws.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2016, 09:57:54 pm by Wuerstchenhund »
 

Offline madires

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7695
  • Country: de
  • A qualified hobbyist ;)
Re: Rigol reliability
« Reply #78 on: May 22, 2016, 12:14:18 pm »
Quote
The best way to find out which manufacturer has good support is also by feedback of other users/customers. That makes this forum very valuable. And some manufactures understood that and got a representative here. Or they read the feedback.

That works for hobbyists who are looking for some bottom-of-the-barrel/entry level gear which sells in large numbers to other hobbyists. The Rigol DS1054z is a good example for such cheap gear. It doesn't work for more expensive gear, though, simply because there usually aren't many reviews out there for expensive gear.

Also, not every review is necessarily well done or comes to the correct conclusion. There's a lot of noise out there.

I think, if you would ask here about some expensive T&M gear you would get some feedback. We're simply decent engineers who don't brag about expensive toys at work ;) And you're right, we need better noise filters.
 

Offline mstoer

  • Contributor
  • Posts: 48
  • Country: ca
Re: Rigol reliability
« Reply #79 on: May 22, 2016, 05:37:53 pm »
I have had a DS2102 for just over 3 years with no problems so far.   My DG1022 (very low end fxn gen) is also 3 years old.   The DP832 is around 2 years old now and a couple of  months ago I bought  DM3058E.   Nothing has broken down so far and works as per spec from what I can tell.

In a past job we bought a TEK TDS210.  It had to be sent back for repairs after 3 months when it suddenly became unresponsive (powered up and did nothing else).     A couple years later (out of warranty) we noticed an increase in baseline noise (80kHz) that often came in bursts.  The repair cost was going to exceed the cost of the scope, so it was left alone.

We had a TDS350 as well which worked flawlessly for years.

You could buy a Keysight/Agilent and still have a Rigol:
http://mightyohm.com/blog/2009/11/agilent-dso1000-firmware-update-confirms-rigol-connection/
 

Offline vze1lryy

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 78
  • Country: us
Re: Rigol reliability
« Reply #80 on: May 24, 2016, 02:38:42 am »
Basically they seem like perfectly good honest machines. If nothing else, cheap-o Rigol kit is absolutely adequate for the vast majority of technician-level work. And that is of course going to be the bread and butter demographic for the brand to begin with. Look at the background in most of Louis Rossmann's videos; ( etc) a venerable old DS1102E, which is apparently quite adequate for his repair work. And yes, he's tighter than a duck's arse, but then so are most businessmen and tradesmen. They spend money when they _need_ to.

I find the Rigol to be decent. However, I never purchased it with the intention of repairing anything with it. I bought it to use as an educational tool for the channel because it is easier to explain a concept if people can see it, so I literally sorted by lowest price, and there it was... and it still works. I also used the software that comes with it to take screenshots that I use in some of the educational documents I created.

Is it the best thing in the world, no.

Am I ever going to repair anything with a $20,000 one that I wouldn't with the $399 one.. no.

So it's good for me.
Louis Rossmann
Component level motherboard repair technician.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf