But I have one question you might be able to answer: wasn't that scope back in 2014 or so a lot ahead of the whole competition considering that it still stays on the top of the competition spec wise ?
And do you know about hardware iterations and improvements over those 7 or 9 year long production lifecycle ?
Yes, it's fairly unusual for a product to last that long in the market, although I think the Hantek 6022 and Rigol desktop scope have had similar lifespans (certainly I referenced the 6022 in the original post). Bench PSUs for instance, have changed a lot (mainly for the smps worse) in that time.
We know a reasonable amount about the hardware changes over the years. Mine is a very early one, with quite a few hand mods, it used a switching regulator for the negative analogue supply rail rather than the later linear one (which may account for it having a lower supply current than others have reported). It is also the only one that doesn't have a connection between the case and the probe grounds, it also has a dedicated sync decoder for analogue video - fairly redundant these days.
Later revisions then added copper foil to make the case ground connection to the input shielding cans and linear -ve regulator (strangely, from traces that others have posted, neither of these changes seems to have changed the noise levels on the most sensitive ranges). Later still, the case grounding was done by naked traces along the edges of the PCB. At some point, the dedicated video sync decoder was removed and the functionality included in the FPGA.
Most recent of all seems to be a change in FPGA manufacturer. I'm don't know whether this was due to cost of supply issues. I think Florentbr is the only one who really knows about that one as he included images for both in his recent releases, you can find a bit more detail in one of the closed issues on his Github S/W page. That is the only change that is tied down to a specific Serial Number range. The other historic changes (while they are probably tied to S/N, and certainly PCB revision) are less well defined.
Hantek seem to have concentrated on keeping the 6022 as cheap as possible during this time, I don't know what cost reductions they have introduced, but it still doesn't have AC coupling and relies on the PC S/W and USB speed for it's triggering functions. The 6022 thread (referenced in my original post) shows the inventiveness of owners, including the OpenHantek S/W and add-on switchable input coupling implementations, but I haven't followed the thread closely.
P.S. The FPGA image has gone through a few versions over the years, presumably bug fixes or performance improvements - Owon are hopeless at documenting changes!