is the Siglent SDS1104X-E the best bang for the buck under $500? Even considering the current free upgrades now offered from rigol?
Depending your needs, Siglent offers a bit more, with two asics has twice as much samppe rate, except with a single channel, more digital bus decoder standards and a few options extra, as adding wifi, nixed signals and gen after the fact.
I trust the user interface will get better with time, rigol had 5 years to develop.
If you need, or will need and can afford now, some of the optional stuff from the siglent and can live with their user interface maybe 150 worth the difference. For me in Argentina getting the siglent with the function gen would be twice as much as the rigol, so I went for the rigol and I'm happy.
The bode is pretty limited in the siglent, as the gen it comws with, the possibility to add the MSO is cool but could be done other ways maybe cheaper. I wouldn't bother with wifi as I use LAN all over the place and wice the sampling is quite pointless for me as I do small embedded and audio, nothing close to need 1GSa/s. In case I need to check a signal for something I can use single channel 1GSa/s. With all that I couldn't afford twice as much, still 150 is 43% extra, not a small difference. Rigol still is good bang per buck, as ia the Siglent, but pricepoint isn't quite the same. Now, if options weren't included, I absolutely need advanced trigger and serial decoder, plus deep memory and record are quite nice to have, so price would be more similar and we are talking a different thing.
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