Rigol DS1052E & other DSOs of the same price/caliber

[Lunat1c]

Guys, I have taken the advice of many of you here and kept an eye on eBay for a good old analog oscilloscope to buy at a good price. I found several analog oscilloscopes with bandwidths ranging from 50mhz to 200mhz which were at incredible prices. The only downside is that shipping to my country costs too much. For an oscilloscope to ship from France to Malta it costs over €120, and sometimes that's as much or almost as much as the oscilloscope itself. This being said, I think I'm only left with two choices. Either buy a hand-held oscilloscope (like the Fluke 97) or at least find an oscilloscope which ships for free. The Rigol DS1052E is within my budget. I saw the review and the tear down videos that Dave made but I need to make sure that I'm not making a mistake by going for it (it being a Chinese product and all that). I'm an EE student, focusing mainly on electronics and I need to make sure that this would at least suit whatever I might need throughout a typical EE course. If there are any other oscilloscopes of this caliber you think I should look at before making a decision please do mention them, I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks a lot.

[Simon]

what exactly do you want to do with the oscilloscope ? that is the question that will provide the answer to the suitability of any particular scope, the rigol scope is a decent machine for the price and is of reasonable quality if that's your question. many of us on here have one and like it

[Lunat1c]

Well, so far I've had to use an oscilloscope several times mainly to measure the bandwidth of some circuit, to check the frequency response, measure rise/fall times etc... but lately I've been tinkering with digital electronics. Later on I'm sure I'll find myself using it to troubleshoot faulty equipment and to work on several projects on my own time to build on what I learn in class. This is what I can think of at the moment.

[alm]

The Rigol (and especially Instek) scopes appear good value for money. You won't confuse them with the brand-name upper low-end to mid-end scopes, but they don't cost $2k-10k either.

[Lunat1c]

Is the 3 year warranty only applicable to US buyers or is it for everyone?

[alm]

Check the distributor, since shipping to China and back is likely to be a significant part of the purchase price.

[Simon]

shipping to china can be between £50-100, I got a £50 discount on mine because i was initially unhappy with the units noise performance and the seller offered a return at cost, when I found that the return price was £85 I suggested a refund of 50 and i keep the scope and he agreed

[McPete]

Depending on how soon you need it, I'll be getting a GW Instek GDS1062A sometime soon, when Tequipment.net send it on to me. I'll definately be talking about it on the forums when it arrives.
It's fairly comparable to the Rigol in most regards, but has double the memory depth in some modes, and has a 10MHz wider bandwidth as stock, but I  will assume it isn't hackable.
Shipping to Australia ended up being about $60USD, using USPS... Which takes a while, but hey, I don't mind.

[Lunat1c]

I'm in no hurry whatsoever. For some reason when I'm about to buy a chinese product I start feeling the "buyer's remorse" before I purchase the damn thing 

Edit: Thanks McPete -I've searched the forum for some info on the GW Instek GDS1062A and I've read some positive stuff from many people, including Dave. It even has a lifetime warranty! The shipping isn't that expensive either from tequipment (would cost me about $50 using USPS)

[McPete]

Tequipment tell me that my scope will ship on the 20th of this month. In truth, I'd rather buy from a local supplier, but local prices are that much higher than international prices, it isn't worth my while.

Just be a tad careful with the whole "lifetime" warranty thing. The defined lifetime may be a heck of a lot shorter than you're expecting- As little as 10 years for the whole unit, in some cases. Tektronix and Fluke do a bit of that these days... Still, I have seen some good things about GW's customer service, and we've got a number of their power supplies at work that continue to soldier on, despite being 30 years old!