Thanks for the review - In another post - I asked about looking for a PS for automotive LED light work with some flexibility for other projects. What is your take on this PS for that sort of usage? It seems that you don't find it all that precise, but the Rigols are too much $$$.
I like that it is floating, it seems to have sufficient range.
I don't like that it overshoots.
I suppose you could change out the displays for LEDs and the potentiometers for multi-turn.
I have no idea what sort of current draw a car LED light would have, but if you're talking about brake / signal LED replacements, I believe they would be drawing on the order of 30 to 100mA at ~11 to 14V or so and should have some sort of internal current limiting anyway. I.e. there is no reason why you would need a precision power supply given that the supply the bulb will be running in (in the car) is nowhere near precise. I would say a cheap supply like this is sufficient for a vast majority of hobby work, and if you're not sure if you need a precision supply, you probably don't.
Otherwise, if I was looking for a good supply that will last me for the next decade, I'll definitely pick up one of the Rigols.
If you need something accurate within +-10A and +-0.1V, the LCD display is sufficient, and as you can see from the photos, the adjustment pots can be easily swapped out to multiturn pots which I plan to do so. I'm actually starting to like the LCD display just because the electro-luminescent display looks really quite nice in real life!
Most supplies should be floating which makes it easier when probing stuff so you don't need to worry about loops and all that, and also allows placing the supplies in series for example to make positive and negative rails.
As for overshoot / transients, I think this is about in-line with all the low-end supplies, but I don't think it's much of a problem since I've always erred on the side of caution and not connect circuits directly to the supply when turning it on / off. That said I wouldn't exactly call this Tekpower to have an 'overshoot' problem at all. If you watch Dave's review on the Rigol, it also has turn-on transients which could be a problem with very sensitive circuits. In all, what I concluded in the review was a supply that was basically in-line with the performance I was expecting, but with better construction than others in the same price point such as the Mastech. I think I'll go play around with it a bit more and do more tests on turn-on performance as well as load performance.
[Update]
Tknx, I read your post on a PSU for testing HID bulbs for cars. You'll need a beefy supply for those since they draw between 4 to 8A or so at 12V, and require a HID lamp ballast for starting and then limiting the current draw in the bulbs. I'm not sure what sort of turn-on current is required to get the lamp started up but it seems like this supply with two outputs in parallel is capable of handling that. If the starting burst requires too much current, you can add a battery or large capacitor in parallel with the output to help in the initial current surge.