Why Oscilloscope Probes are expensive

[tautech]

One has to ask why, with the probably millions of P6100 or similar probes that I and you can buy for ~$14/a pair do other "branded" probes cost so much?

And how many failures do these P**** probes have? Bugger all be the truth.

From the same stable there's also the P2***, P4***, P5*** and P7*** ranges as well as a range of current and differential probes.
Passives to 1000:1 and BW's to 500 MHz and an active 1G probe and members rubbish these P**** probes as crap. 
Time will decide I'm sure.

[saturation]

As archived older forum posts may have said, use the cheap and cheerful for daily work, easy to replace, no tears for damage or loss.  Buy many and stock up when you find a particular one with good specs.  QC varies with no-name brands even within the same 'brand' name, for whatever brand is worth. Keep your good probes for when measurement quality is essential, but that usually is less an issue under 200 MHz.  Closer to 500 MHz, good probes shine.

Probes differ in actual characteristics and can alter with age, so its best to 'calibrate' a probe if you make a critical measurement to insure nothing has changed, or to find if the probe is broken is subtle ways.

When making critical measurement touching or tapping probes, even high quality ones, will distort measurements, best done hands off once clamped.

The probes are certainly the weakest point of affordable oscilloscopes. I've got a Rigol DS1074Z and the probes are really crappy. Just tapping them with the finger shows how flaky they are.

But of course if I get four decent probes at $100 each, well, it's more than 50% of the price of the oscilloscope itself. Anyway it would be great to have a shootout of reasonably cheap but modestly reliable probles, if that thing exists after all!

[exe]

why is it expensive?

I think car analogy is fine here: expensive spare parts is the easiest way to increase income. It's just a part of their business model. But, yeah, engineering high-frequency probes is not trivial and this also adds to cost. Particularly, when it comes above a few hundreds of MHz.

I also think the volume of production matters a lot. High-freq probes are rarely needed and this makes them even more expensive And lab gear is expensive in general. Fortunately, we have Rigol

[PChi]

Another reason why the named brand probes are expensive problem is that mould tools to make all the little plastic parts are incredibly expensive so if you don't sell many the tooling costs make up a large part of the purchase price.
The quality probes use custom coaxial cable with I believe a resistive inner core and low capacitance construction which doesn't come cheap.
For general purpose use the cheap probes are adequate but at a couple of hundred MHz there is a difference.
I do wonder if the likes of Rigol can actually make money. Test equipment is hardly mass market.

[exe]

Another reason why the named brand probes are expensive problem is that mould tools to make all the little plastic parts are incredibly expensive so if you don't sell many the tooling costs make up a large part of the purchase price.

Can they just use the same plastic for all probes? Or at least for probes like in 50-500MHz range...

[danadak]

At some point you might want a low C probe, FETs are used and those probes
can be pretty expensive.

Go to Linear Technology (linear.com) and Jim Williams has published ap notes
on rolling your own.

Another aspect of probes is in use for doing scope common mode measurements
at high frequency. Probe to probe variations can contribute significant errors to
CM rejection.

Regards, Dana.

[retrolefty]

Another reason why the named brand probes are expensive problem is that mould tools to make all the little plastic parts are incredibly expensive so if you don't sell many the tooling costs make up a large part of the purchase price.
The quality probes use custom coaxial cable with I believe a resistive inner core and low capacitance construction which doesn't come cheap.
For general purpose use the cheap probes are adequate but at a couple of hundred MHz there is a difference.
I do wonder if the likes of Rigol can actually make money. Test equipment is hardly mass market.

' Compared to mass consumer electronics that is true. However with the new 'global economy' the market got/gets a lot bigger then it use to be and one gets a lot more scope per buck then ever before.

[barry14]

It is interesting to read the responses to why some oscilloscope probes are expensive. I wonder, however, why anyone is surprised. What is true of probes is true of most products. There are ballpoint pens that cost well under a dollar (often given away as a promotion) and there are ballpoint pens that cost hundreds of dollars. There are digital cameras that cost under $100 and others that cost over $5000.  One could go on but I think my point has been made.  This is an old expression that may apply here: "You get what you pay for."  Higher priced items, in general, use better materials, more sophisticated manufacturing methods, and have additional features (some of which may not be immediately obvious).