Agilent MSO7000: for or against?

[dfnr2]

I have a lecroy WavePro 7200A, which is the older generation of X-stream scope.  It's a phenomenal scope, with great triggering, built-in segmented memory, series-mode acquisition that moots the "high wfm" claims of other scopes, really great math/measurement capabilities (which are really useful for sensors, analog signal processing, and feedback / control applications).  I have been using this scope productively for about 2 years now.  My only beef with this scope is that sometimes it feels a bit unresponsive when I'm cranking on the knobs trying to chase a signal.

It's great for analog and RF work, and for a fair bit of simple embedded work (which is most of my embedded work), but it cannot keep pace with more complex embedded systems.  It has low-speed serial decode (uart, SPI, I2C) but no serial trigger.  The MSO options are limited (their MS-32 module)

Since the prices of the now-obsolete (but still serviceable) MSO7000A scopes have been coming down, I have been looking into these.  If I were to buy one, I would get the UART, SPI, I2C, max memory, segmented memory options, plus the measurement statistics+cursor/waveform updates.  That means I'd have to sell my LeCroy, trading down in some areas to gain in others. 

I have not had a chance to demo one yet, but I have seen these scopes praised and panned in some threads in this forum, by members that I believe are quite knowledgeable.   

So, I'm curious, can any forum members who have experience with these scopes suggest for or against the MSO7000A? 

[KTP]

max memory comes free now on the 7000.

AgilentUsed on ebay has certiprime 100mhz MSO7014A with 3 year warranty for $3000 and used MSO7104A 1 Ghz for $7500 (my estimates of offers they would take)

That is the route I would go if I had not gotten already an MSOX3024A.  I bet they also will sell you a certiprime MSO7104B for $9900 if you ask nicely.

But sorry I can't be of help on how nice they are to use...that screen is gorgeous though.

[dfnr2]

The last 4 certiprime 7100A's were $7999, but no options.

[RRobot]

I've bought from them. Not a lot of flex on price, but they will deal a bit on options which are expensive on the 7000. You might want to check that out before you buy, as you indicate you want a lot of them. Overall I was very happy. I'm not sure the 7000A models come with certiprime warrenty, but they do appear to have 7 day return policy on most of their stuff.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Unless they've changed anything very recently, most options can be had for free via trial licenses and setting the clock back.

AFAIUI the 7000 is basically the same as the 6000 with a bigger screen, in which case you will have absolutely no complaints whatsoever about speed and responsiveness. Everything is instant. 

[JackOfVA]

I recently bought one of the Certiprime factory refurbished MSO7034B 'scopes via E-bay and have about a month's worth of experience with it.  It replaces a TEK 430A two channel 400 MHz (but only 200 MS/s) CRT-based digital scope I bought in 1998.

It's an excellent product and much better than my 14 year old TDS430A. One thing about the large LCD screen, though, is that if only one channel is active and you set the vertical gain so that the trace fills the screen, the "jaggies" are clearly noticeable. With three or four traces on the screen, you can't see the steps in the displayed traces, but they are certainly visible with one waveform filling the screen.

I also bought one of Agilent's "Tek-to-Agilent" N2744A probe adapters so I can use my Tek FET probe and TCP202 current probe with the MSO7034B. It works very well. It's cheaper to go with the adapter for $450 than laying out several kilo-dollars for Agilent compatible probes. (List price is $495, but it's available with a 10% discount from Metric Test.)

Jack

[0xdeadbeef]

I saw you had some criticisms of the agilent MSO7000 series scopes, so I'd be very interested in some more specifics, as I am looking at picking one of these up used.

Indeed amongst other scopes, we have some 7000As, one DSOX3000 and several newer and older LeCroys at work. And while e.g. A WaveSurfer 64MXs and a MSO7054A were roughly in the same price range when we bought them, I like the LeCroys much more even though they are louder, boot slower and have less waveforms per second.

I currently have a really nice, older LeCroy (WavePro WP7200a), but it has no MSO option, and while I originally was using it for medical imaging projects (MRI, ultrasound), I'm now wanting to target embedded applications where the MSO option would be useful.  I do have RS232/SPI/I2C decode, but no trigger.

Lately I'm not so convinced any more that MSO is really so desirable. There were some specific topics in the past where I needed 8 or even 16 channels at once, but nowadays, I tend to prefer a solid 4ch scope instead of messing with digital channels even for e.g. SPI analysis. And when I absolutely need to do a complex SPI analysis with more than 4ch, I just use an ultra-cheap USB LA instead ... even though I have a 10k€ Agilent desktop LA sitting on my bench.
I tried to use the MSO extension once with our Lecroy Wavesurfer and it was close to unusable. The integration of the digital channels is a bit better for the MSO7000A we have, but activating them cuts down bandwidth and memory, so I haven't used that for years either.

I am also looking for a bit better responsiveness and boot time compared with the LeCroy. 
I had looked at the newer LeCroy scopes, but the prices are out of my range.  Since the MSO7104A scopes have been going at about $5-8K on Ebay (Certiprime at 8K), I have been seriously looking into these.  Naturally, I scanned the EEVblog (and the rest of the web) for honest comments, and you're the first to really pan these scopes.

I think all current LeCroys are windows based. At least all that we have are either based on XP or Win7. So they take a while to boot and they are quite loud and produce a lot of warm air. And I mean A LOT. After all they are full windows PCs with all benefits and drawbacks. And the update rate can be slowish for large time scales and large memory depths.
In this regard, the Agilent scopes shine. The MS7000A we have are quite silent ... not really dead silent, but much more silent than the LeCroys. They also boot up pretty quickly. And they are a bit easier to use for newbies as they simply lack so many features that the LeCroys have. Besides, the update rate is always quick.

That being said, of course everybody has his/her preferences and different scopes might be useful for different jobs. My job is embedded automotive development and apart from the usual protocol analysis and analog diagnostic issues I sometimes need to prove certain timings with statistical measurements for jitter analysis etc. And this is where the LeCroys shine and where the Agilents suck. All Agilent scopes I ever tried measured in the screen buffer and thus you can't really trust automatic measurements of periods etc. Besides, the automatic measurements and trigger possibilities are extremely limited if compared to a LeCroy WaveRunner or even Wavesurfer. And the manual measurements are also limited due to restriction to the display buffer. There are indeed lots of things you simply can't measure with an MSO7000 and that we need to measure at work.
Generally, If you look at all the options and possibilities of a WaveRunner and compare it to the few simply menus of an MSO7000A, the MSO7000A looks really poor and basic.

Besides, there are several smaller issues that I don't like about the MSO7000 series or Agilent scopes in general. E.g. the MSO7000 doesn't show the current sample rate on the main screen which every other scope (including e.g. the DSOX3000) does. And I find it most annoying that it doesn't allow you to switch between auto and normal trigger mode with a dedicated button (the DSOX3000 allows to configure a general purpose button for this). Last but not least there is no way of gating measurement other than using the zoom window. Again, while this might be a smaller issue for lots of people, it makes certain measurements nearly impossible for me.
Also I always found it hard to believe that the 8Mpts sample memory were really comparable to statements of other vendors. E.g. our smallest WaveSurfer has 12Mpts of memory. Which sounds like only 50% more. Still, with the WaveSurfer, I can easily record hundreds of milliseconds and still zoom in to see all details of a 1MBaud SPI transmission, while on the MSO7000 this is not possible or only with the segmented memory feature. It seems to me that 8Mpts is a very optimistic declaration based on a best case scenario with interleaving and all.

Of course not all is good about LeCroys and not all is bad about Agilents. Agilent scopes have this analog feeling to them. So people who love analog scopes love Agilents. Then again, as digital storage scopes with focus on measurement and single trigger capabilities, they leave to be desired IMHO. Also if you used the touchscreen of a LeCroy WaveSurfer/WaveRunner once, it's kinda hard to go back to a "normal" scope. Even worse, the WaveScan and LabNotebook features are really pretty much brilliant and the MSO7000 has absolutely nothing that even goes in that direction.

This being said, I watched some used LeCroy WaveSurfers on eBay going for ~4k€, so they are not completely out of reach. But honestly, for my home stuff they are a bit over the top and I wouldn't like the fan noise and warm air at home, so I decided to get a tiny HMO2024 instead which is good enough for me despite of some minor issues and limitations.

[dfnr2]

Thanks 0xdeadbeef, for the detailed and informative comments.  I had hoped the Agilent would have similar capabilities to the LeCroy, but looking through the Agilent manuals, the 7000 series would not be able to come close.   Perhaps a third-party USB LA with a trigger out, coupled with a cheaper scope like the HMO series, would be a reasonable solution.