I hate to add another oscilloscope thread as I know the info is out there but I am overwhelmed. Reading this stuff almost feels like reading in-depth reviews for tvs and cameras: The people reviewing use all of the capabilities so anything but the high(er) end seems like utter garbage.
Given that, until fairly recently, the likely most-recommended scope in the world was the Rigol DS1054Z, I don't think it’s at all fair to characterize the reviews like that.
…Its clear I need to get an oscilloscope to do anything meaningful. I know enough about test equipment & its eye watering prices to know that $300 for a new oscilloscope is "cheap" but I can't help but think there has to be something cheaper that can give basic & accurate measurements. The DHO800 is $330 but I know I do not need all of the capabilities it provides. Looking at used prices on ebay bottom prices for an (old) digital scope seem to be about $200+ and at that point I might as well just spend the extra $100. I see analog scopes recommended but many are sold "for parts" and I think initially I will need a scope that I can trust the readings.
TL;DR Is there anything out there in the $100-$200 range that can provide reliable functionality to do something like aligning an FM receiver or verify an old EICO signal generator is working.
If you’re willing to spend $200, just spend the $330-400 and get a new Rigol or Siglent. I think you’ll be happier in the long run. Early digital scopes represent one of the least-attractive options possible, because they have serious limitations (foremost among them: very small memory depth) without getting you any of the advantages of an analog scope (absolute responsiveness, smooth display).
The aforementioned Rigol was the first scope I ever owned (and the first I ever used), and it certainly wasn’t overwhelming, and I didn’t know anything about them at the time. But now I do, and a lot of the things I suspect you’re dismissing as unneeded bells and whistles are actually really useful. You’ll grow into them.
The one thing that digital scopes really excel at, and precisely where deep memory is super useful, is single-shot capture, and the ability to zoom in
after capture to look at details. Analog scopes can’t do this at all (ignoring the tiny handful of spectacularly expensive and rare analog storage scopes that were made for a while), and old digital scopes do it very poorly by today's standards. Another is triggering, where digital scopes can do more complex triggering that is
really useful in practice.
And super cheap (under $300) new digital scopes today fall into a similar “uncanny valley” as old digital scopes: they’re mostly so bad as to be functionally useless. Any tool, whether basic or advanced, needs to be
competent at whatever it’s meant to do. The super cheap scopes often fail at even basic functionality, like reliably triggering on a simple periodic signal. An untrustworthy tool is often worse than none at all.