Products > Test Equipment
Are 'premium' scope brands still justified?
pdenisowski:
--- Quote from: tszaboo on April 18, 2024, 02:15:35 pm ---Somehow a a "refurbished" unit turns up always. Not for the cheap stuff usually.
--- End quote ---
We (R&S) have a demo pool of equipment that we use for, well, demonstrations, and that also loans units to account managers, AEs, customers, etc. on a short- or long-term basis. All of these "demo" units are always for sale. If you purchase one, it goes back to our service center for a refurb / cal and then is sent to the customer with the full factory warranty. This applies to both expensive and "value" instruments.
And when I say all of our demo units are for sale, I really do mean all of them. When I got one of our new NPA power analyzers pre-release, it already had a demo sales sticker on it :)
--- End quote ---
hfleming:
All I can say, is that most of the cheap new stuff on the market blows the lid off from the brand names from not so long ago… spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes and function generators… when I first used them in the 1980’s, the spectrum analyzer that I used at work (Tektronix 292) costed a lot more than my house. The tektronics oscilloscopes and function generators were not so much cheaper. At few years later we got the first DSO, that didn’t even have a vector display, just a bunch of dots that you had to join mentally in your mind (Nicolette XX). For the next bunch of years I used HP, Tektronix, R&s stuff that costed more than a house. 20 years ago the brand name DSO’s were still crap, always going back to my Tektronics 485 or later 2285 analogue scopes. Lately equipment like the cheap siglent DSO’s, function generators, Spectrum analyzers blows all the pro equipment out of the world that I used not so long ago in the lab. Onliest thing that remains very too pricey for a home lab is a decent RF-generator…. Would love to have But that is just my own opinion. Would love to have modern Keysight, R&S or Tektronix stuff in my home-lab, but can’t afford them, but even the budget stuff I have now still blows my mind compared to the very expensive stuff I used in a lab not so many years ago, IMHO.
2N3055:
--- Quote from: nctnico on April 18, 2024, 10:25:25 am ---The price of test equipment is not in the hardware, it is in the engineering and support. All major test equipment manufacturers are producing in low wage countries.
--- End quote ---
This statement is interesting.
So you are saying that my 15000 USD Keysight is so expensive because of the support?
What support do you mean?
Warranty is same as others: return to repair/replace.
Do you mean call them for some support ?
Well you DON'T get that...
In warranty you get some few tickets on general level.
Their (by the way excellent to that matter) support you have to PAY for.
So I paid for support twice: once for overpriced hardware and then if I actually want support I have to pay for it...
That is your truth. What you are saying is simply not true anymore. It used to be.. But not anymore.
It pretty much a racket.
Not to mention that what they called support ticket was me reporting bugs.
Out of two, one was never fixed and never will be.
They should have paid ME for that...
They kept reminding me that these were two complementary "support requests" and that from that point on they will charge me by request..
Or I could get this affordable Support Contract.....
No, big brands have knowledge and if you have to use them for that, you can have it, but it will cost you additional money.
So you are wrong.
You don't get any support included in very overpriced hardware price.
Only normal warranty like with any other manufacturer.
nctnico:
I'm not wrong, your experience is just different. I have asked Keysight and Tektronix for support in the past and didn't need to have warranty or a limited number of tickets. I got my technical questions answered to a satisfactory level. It is simple as that. But I did make sure to be really clear, without adding any excess information, in describing the exact problem and what my exact question was.
2N3055:
--- Quote from: nctnico on April 18, 2024, 03:35:43 pm ---I'm not wrong, your experience is just different. I have asked Keysight and Tektronix for support in the past and didn't need to have warranty or a limited number of tickets. I got my technical questions answered to a satisfactory level. It is simple as that. But I did make sure to be really clear, without adding any excess information, in describing the exact problem and what my exact question was.
--- End quote ---
So you are implying it was my fault... Nice...
I don't know about Tek. But how recent is your Keysight experience?
Did you miss all the hubbub in last year or so about how they changed support structure and whole market approach...
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version