The new Siglent SDS1x04X-E series SPO have entered the world market and generated some interest.
Siglent were kind enough to offer me an early SDS1104X-E for evaluation and I couldn’t resist finding out whether this scope has the potential to meet the high expectations. The new models have a whole lot to offer – certainly more than the average DSO in this class.
The SDS1x04X-E series scopes aren’t expensive, yet they are certainly not the cheapest DSOs around. But then again, some might be looking for the best value for money rather than just the cheapest price.
In any case this appears to be a very interesting product and I felt it deserves an in-depth review.
Anyone interested in these scopes will find the demonstration, verification and discussion of all features together with any noticeable deficiencies, which of course I’ve already reported to Siglent.
Most of the functionality was of surprising high quality already, with only minor issues that did not prevent me from doing my tests the way I had them planned and getting the results I'm going to present here. Of course there were (and sure as hell still are) a number of flaws, particularly in the areas that are either completely new or have undergone a major re-design:
• Serial decoding had been redesigned and looks promising, but needs further refinement.
• MSO Option has not yet been available.
• Bode Plotter first shot, good concept, but certainly far from finished yet.
• XY-mode currently some emergency solution, that will see some major re-design.
•
Sequence mode is currently broken, but Siglent promised a fix within a short time.A full and final review of these functions listed above will be published later, after a firmware with the necessary fixes has been released.
Either way, this review is not yet finished, so you can expect regular updates in the future. I just figured some folks might appreciate to get some detailed information about the new kids in town…
The review is provided piece-wise as small pdf files (with slightly overlapping content), because this site obviously doesn’t allow attachments bigger than 1MB. Also not more than 2MB total for one post, so I’ll need several posts to get the initial contents online.
Here we start:
SDS1104X-E Review 1-25
- Introduction
- Differences to SDS1202X-E
- Base Functionality
- - Display
- - - SPO (Super Phosphor Oscilloscope)
- - - Display Modes
- - - A first glance at measurements
- - - Persistence Mode
- - - Horizontal Zoom
- - - - Zoom Mode
- - - - Changing Timebase in Stop Mode
- - - Vertical Zoom
- - - Reference Waveforms
EDIT: Uploaded latest revision of the document. The most important updates are:
• Improved image quality
• Some typos and formal issues addressed
SDS1104X-E Review 26-50
- Base Functionality
- - Acquisition
- - - Memory Depth
- - - Acquisition Modes
- - - - Normal
- - - - Peak Detect
- - - - Average
- - - - Eres
- - - - Roll Mode
- - - X-Y
- - - Interpolation
- - - - Dots + x
- - - - Dots + sin(x)/x
- - - - Vectors + x
- - - - Vectors + Sin(x)/x
- - - - Examples
EDIT: Uploaded latest revision of the document. The most important updates are:
• Improved image quality
• A more realistic look at XY-trace quality
• Some typos and formal issues addressed
Anyone interested in these scopes is welcome to ask questions, request additional tests and discuss the results. Be aware though, that my limited spare time will only allow me to play with the scope at the weekends.
Anyone who’s already got one of these scopes is welcome to share their experiences and add more review content to this thread.