can you accept the bugs or problems in some low price oscilloscopes?

[microe]

I have noted that SIGLENT and some other low price oscilloscopes manufacturer( comparatively new manufacturers) has got more and more attention. For the low price, these oscilloscopes/generators  may be not as steady as Agilent or Tektronix oscilloscopes. But I think every product is grown up from problems. So I want to know what kinds of problems or bugs can you tolerate, meanwhile what kinds of mistake or disadvantages you can not take with ?

[jay]

My cheap Hantek crashes about once a month. It's not too annoying. It's measurements drift slowly over time but running the self calibration feature restores accuracy to reasonable level. I find that somewhat disturbing.. Well, it was cheap and otherwise a nice scope.

[AndyC_772]

I have as close to zero tolerance for buggy tools as makes no difference.

If I'm using a piece of test equipment at all, it's because I'm working on something that has bugs of its own that need fixing. My time, my attention and my customer's money are focused on getting that project working - not the scope.

That's the big difference, in my experience, between the established suppliers of high quality test gear and the newer entrants to the market. Companies like Agilent really understand how boringly reliable their kit needs to be, and that achieving a very high standard of usability and reliability is absolutely not optional.

The fact that they price their kit accordingly is fine by me, and if competition from cheaper (but less reliable) scopes brings that price down a bit, then so much the better.

[nctnico]

So far every bit of complicated (=needs lots of software to run) test equipment I have used had bugs or 'shortcomings'. No matter whether it said Tektronix, Agilent, Iwatsu, Lecroy or Siglent on it's label. What is most important is that there is a simple workaround.

[bwat]

So far every bit of complicated (=needs lots of software to run) test equipment I have used had bugs or 'shortcomings'.

Do expensive scopes with, presumably, more features, have more bugs as a consequence?

They saying we were taught at school was "the only bug free code is the code you don't write." Every one of us that writes software has to take a long hard look at how we do what we do. Every one of us that purchases products should ask ourselves if we are too accepting of buggy products.

[tautech]

The major players, Tek, Agilent etc have had decades of product and IP development, some acquired by way of acquisitions and have set test equipment pricing accordingly.
In recent times their choice to have some products made in Asia have tempted the Asians to give it a go also.
Although they have been lagging in product and firmware quality, as most are aware they are catching up fast.

When I first looked at getting a DSO, a TDS2012 was a top notch unit costing ~NZ$2.5K and similar spec Asian units ~NZ$1K less.

Man how things have changed and will keep changing, it is great that prices have become affordable for so many.
Hobbyist EE's buying 100 MHz for their first scope.....unbelievable.

Really, are we expecting too much? Sure there are bugs, but without the Asian equipment we will all be paying 3 to 5 times more for gear that would have not advanced in spec to that we see today.

The Asians now have a huge established market with loyal supporters and things can only improve IMO as their communication skills catch up with their innovative products.

So, select a product supported by a dealer that has good contact with the manufacturer and give him feedback for ongoing product improvement so we all win.

The two real worries on my mind are product obsolescence in this "throw away society" world and the "oneupmanship" in competing products, ending with features that very few of us need.

[electrophiliate]

My Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope seems to corrupt USB thumb drives if I use it to create new directories for snapshots.

So I just usually save snapshots to the root directory, which works fine.

[edit: Now works OK! Possibly was due to a bad flash drive.]

[liquibyte]

My Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope seems to corrupt USB thumb drives if I use it to create new directories for snapshots.

So I just usually save snapshots to the root directory, which works fine.

Corrupt as in partition table or corrupt as in files?  That's a pretty serious bug either way.

[1xrtt]

I would have thought bugs in low priced oscilloscopes are less annoying than bugs in a scope that cost a fortune.

It's all about expectations. Bugs on expensive tools are less tolerated because one would think the supplier took the necessary steps to ensure reliability and thus, are pricing the gear accordingly. One would not expect so much on a cheap device. "You get what you paid for", isn't it?
As a hobbyist, I have an Owon SDS7102V and I'm reasonably satisfied with it. I was annoyed at first by the noise issue and  get an affordable Tek 2336 on Ebay, which works fine (as expected  ), but in the end, I use more the Owon, and the 2336 only when I need more than two traces.
One other thing that I don't like on the Owon is the battery life. At first, it lasted two-three hours but six months later it lasts a little over one hour. And if powered off and disconnected from mains, it discharges in about a week!

[bobcat]

I have always believed that my test equipment should work with few problems. If I am tracing a problem, or analyzing a circuit, I want the scope to work as expected. If it's calibration changes or the software is buggy, how can I rely on measurements? I find random locking up or freezes annoying. I breaks up the test flow and thought processes. My experience has been that the inexpensive scopes require much more time in the long run to get good measurements.

[electrophiliate]

What sort of corruption do you see? I am also interested to know what size drive and what the filesystem format is. Does  the drive have long filenames from windows for example, or is it an otherwise empty drive with only directories and files created on the Rigol? The firmware level would be important too. I haven't heard of other people on the forum reporting such a bug. Perhaps I missed it. If so I am surprised.

Corrupt as in partition table or corrupt as in files?  That's a pretty serious bug either way.

IIRC (it was a while ago), the directory would assume an odd name and would be apparently filled with a bunch of files with garbled names, impossible file sizes, and wildy varied dates decades into the past and future, but I think it was limited to that directory only and the rest of the drive was OK. I think it happened at least twice but not sure if on more than one drive. I took a few measurements today, so I also tried to replicate the issue I mentioned, but unfortunately (fortunately!) was unable to.

I started with a blank 16GB drive formatted with FAT32 and after a successful snapshot in a new directory created on the scope I went back to Windows to add a few directories and files with long names and try again. Did the same with a different 8GB drive also formatted with FAT32 and that worked OK too. The scope wouldn't accept NTFS formatted drives and said something about not supporting multiple partitions (there was only one NTFS partition). Firmware is 00.04.01, I never bothered to update it.

Thanks for prompting me to have another look at the issue. Although it wasn't really a big deal to me since I don't take many snapshots and don't need to create directories when using the scope, I do feel somewhat better knowing that it was probably an anomaly. I also wouldn't want anyone been turned off a classic basic scope based on my anecdote. I have another 8GB drive which has been giving me problems lately and I suspect it is the same drive which I observed the corruption on earlier, so perhaps the flash drive itself was the true culprit.

[liquibyte]

What sort of corruption do you see? I am also interested to know what size drive and what the filesystem format is. Does  the drive have long filenames from windows for example, or is it an otherwise empty drive with only directories and files created on the Rigol? The firmware level would be important too. I haven't heard of other people on the forum reporting such a bug. Perhaps I missed it. If so I am surprised.

Corrupt as in partition table or corrupt as in files?  That's a pretty serious bug either way.

IIRC (it was a while ago), the directory would assume an odd name and would be apparently filled with a bunch of files with garbled names, impossible file sizes, and wildy varied dates decades into the past and future, but I think it was limited to that directory only and the rest of the drive was OK. I think it happened at least twice but not sure if on more than one drive. I took a few measurements today, so I also tried to replicate the issue I mentioned, but unfortunately (fortunately!) was unable to.

I started with a blank 16GB drive formatted with FAT32 and after a successful snapshot in a new directory created on the scope I went back to Windows to add a few directories and files with long names and try again. Did the same with a different 8GB drive also formatted with FAT32 and that worked OK too. The scope wouldn't accept NTFS formatted drives and said something about not supporting multiple partitions (there was only one NTFS partition). Firmware is 00.04.01, I never bothered to update it.

Thanks for prompting me to have another look at the issue. Although it wasn't really a big deal to me since I don't take many snapshots and don't need to create directories when using the scope, I do feel somewhat better knowing that it was probably an anomaly. I also wouldn't want anyone been turned off a classic basic scope based on my anecdote. I have another 8GB drive which has been giving me problems lately and I suspect it is the same drive which I observed the corruption on earlier, so perhaps the flash drive itself was the true culprit.

My money would also be on the drive failing.  I've had something very similar happen to me in the past and it was the drive on its way out.  I've also had them fail at the partition table level, two in two years.  The first time I was able to recover my files off of it, the second it was the OS partition so I just reinstalled on a new drive.

[don]

Personally I have very low tolerance for bugs.  I cut my teeth a tds754D from tek and it always worked, bug free.  Even today, almost 20 years later, I have all key sequences in muscle memory and I know exactly what will happen if I press a sequence of buttons.    No surprises.  Top notch accuracy. I've since used many scopes from tek, agilent  or lecroy.  All very reliable.  Recently I tried a lower cost buggy scope.  HW was nice, I liked the scope.  But the firmware was too premature and I could not trust it. Too many bugs and I use scope at home for work, not hobby.  If for a hobby I'd probably be okay with it.  But if I have a hot issue at work I have no interest in debugging a tool.  This is why tek or agilent high end equipment is so expensive.  Built like tanks and reliable.  Almost boring because they are so reliable, just giving you reliable data  day after day.  Years and years of development effort behind every scope for the most mundane feature to guarantee it works.   And what people do in SW today they invented and implemented in hardware. 

Point being, low cost buggy scope are still great if you can tolerate the issues when they happen.  Hopefully issues will be fixed, and in a year or two scope will be solid and you can deal with inconvenience until then.  It just depends on what you use scope for. I think low cost scopes that push the envelope are really needed.   Market demand and needs will steer them accordingly.

[Wuerstchenhund]

Personally I have very low tolerance for bugs.

I'm 100% with don on this, my personal tolerance for bugs is very low. The same is true for stupid UI designs btw. For me it's mostly Agilent and Tek at work and now LeCroy at home. I also bought a Siglent SDS1102CNL for a project that required a 'throw away' scope. The hardware was surprisingly well built (the encoders could have wiggled a little less, and the rotary knobs could have been a bit less cheap, though), but the software side was really poor. Aside from that the UI was obviously designed by someone who knows nothing about proper UX design, there were quite a few instances where the scope didn't do what it was expected to do. Trying again often lead to the desired result but for a measurement tool this is unacceptable. I'm using a scope because I want to check some UUT for faults or because the UUT has a known fault. And really, the last thing I want is having to guess if it's the device or the scope that causes the problem.

I had quite a few DSO for personal use (Philips PM3320A, HP 54510A, HP 54542A, some 54600 Series, some Teks), and while the very old ones were certainly limited in capability they still have been highly reliable and always did what I expected them to do. The same is true for my current LeCroy scopes. For example, my WaveRunner LT264M is now 11 years old (it's one of the last WR2 Series scopes), but I yet have to come across a software bug or an instance where it doesn't do what I expect it to do. I can also say the same for my Windows based WaveRunner 64Xi. Obviously there have been bugs in their software, too, but most of them were minor problems in certain use cases, and LeCroy was (and for the 64Xi still is) pretty good in fixing them quickly.

These low cost China scopes probably are fine if you can live with the bugs, and they also put some pressure on the big names in terms of pricing. But the Chinese have to learn that they have to get the software right *before* putting a product on the market. This may not be that important for cell phones or media players, but it definitely is for test and measurement stuff.

Which is one of the reasons why I think that used big name scopes are still a good alternative to a new China low-end scope.

[microe]

Personally I have very low tolerance for bugs.

I'm 100% with don on this, my personal tolerance for bugs is very low. The same is true for stupid UI designs btw. For me it's mostly Agilent and Tek at work and now LeCroy at home.
Which is one of the reasons why I think that used big name scopes are still a good alternative to a new China low-end scope.

In fact, when doing some industry research, such as processing HDTV signals, the Agilent, Tek or Lecroy oscilloscopes is a must. But for high schools, hobbies and some relatively low request industry, I think the SIGLENT, Hantek or some other comparatively new manufacturers can be taken into count. 

[Mark_O]

What sort of corruption do you see? I am also interested to know what size drive and what the filesystem format is. Does  the drive have long filenames from windows for example, or is it an otherwise empty drive with only directories and files created on the Rigol? The firmware level would be important too. I haven't heard of other people on the forum reporting such a bug. Perhaps I missed it. If so I am surprised.

Corrupt as in partition table or corrupt as in files?  That's a pretty serious bug either way.

IIRC (it was a while ago), the directory would assume an odd name and would be apparently filled with a bunch of files with garbled names, impossible file sizes, and wildy varied dates decades into the past and future, but I think it was limited to that directory only and the rest of the drive was OK. I think it happened at least twice but not sure if on more than one drive. I took a few measurements today, so I also tried to replicate the issue I mentioned, but unfortunately (fortunately!) was unable to.

I observed the same behavior on my DS1102CD Rigol, a number of years ago, with the latest update of firmware for that model before they abandoned it. 

Perfectly good USB stick, before and after.  I had used it on the Rigol in the past.  Wrote ~20 screen shots to it during a power supply test session, and it pissed all over the root directory, destroying hundreds of files.  I spent hours recovering what I could.  Lesson learned:  don't trust the Rigol FAT writing abilities, and always use a dedicated memory stick.  Not just one you happen to have handy in your pocket.   

[Orange]

I never use USB sticks to store precious files

[rollatorwieltje]

USB sticks are disposable memory, not something you keep anything valuable on. I've lost count on the number of failed sticks.

I absolutely hate bugs. Can't tolerate them. I tend to look for devices that have limited amounts of features, but have those features implemented well.

[bwat]

I've never had USB sticks fail on me. My git repositories are tarballed, compressed, encrypted, then copied over to a USB stick and my mobile phone at the end of each working day. I use a different stick each day of the week. My sticks and phone are pretty old now (> 4 years). Not a single failure yet.

[nctnico]

Consider yourself lucky. I have had several problems mostly caused by Windows even though I always use the 'software eject' provided by Windows first and then physically remove the USB drive.

[SeanB]

I tested a USB stick by using it for install of Ubuntu as a live distro. Left swap enabled on the drive and left it idle for 2 days. At the end of the 2 days the 4G Kingston stick had stopped working and I had a kernel panic message, unable to acess swap space.  Found bad blocks on the drive, so formatted it again and tried again to kill it further. It just kept on working for 2 days, but I tossed it after the second time.

[Mark_O]

USB sticks are disposable memory, not something you keep anything valuable on.

First of all, that's an opinion, not a fact.  Based on one set of experiences.  I have many USB sticks with valuable content on them.  Of course, it's never my only copy.  But then, nothing I have that's important is ever my only copy, for very long.

I've lost count on the number of failed sticks.

I'm sorry to hear that.  It would certainly explain your negative POV.  OTOH, I've had many, many of them.  And only 1 that ever failed completely.  And a couple others that developed sporadic, distributed errors, that I decommissioned (aka, threw away ).

[Mark_O]

Consider yourself lucky. I have had several problems mostly caused by Windows even though I always use the 'software eject' provided by Windows first and then physically remove the USB drive.

   That's an indictment of the software, not the memory.  I.e., how well (or badly) Windows drivers handle removable media.  The same thing can and does apply to external hard drives.  I.e., any removable media.

It's like my bad Rigol experience I mentioned above.  That had nothing to do with the USB stick and everything to do with the shitty Rigol software, that decided to write BMP files over the root directory structure.

[janoc]

I tested a USB stick by using it for install of Ubuntu as a live distro. Left swap enabled on the drive and left it idle for 2 days. At the end of the 2 days the 4G Kingston stick had stopped working and I had a kernel panic message, unable to acess swap space.  Found bad blocks on the drive, so formatted it again and tried again to kill it further. It just kept on working for 2 days, but I tossed it after the second time.

I hope you realize that leaving swap enabled on a USB stick is a really BAD idea. That will exhaust the limited write endurance of the flash extremely quickly.

[plesa]

I have noted that SIGLENT and some other low price oscilloscopes manufacturer( comparatively new manufacturers) has got more and more attention. For the low price, these oscilloscopes/generators  may be not as steady as Agilent or Tektronix oscilloscopes. But I think every product is grown up from problems. So I want to know what kinds of problems or bugs can you tolerate, meanwhile what kinds of mistake or disadvantages you can not take with ?

I'm not familiar with Siglent, only with Rigol. But is seems to be in the same segment. I was quite dissapointed byt their support when I asked for new version of firmware for PSU to fix some bugs. They never send me an answer nor firmware. So support is zero. This removed Rigol brand from list of suppliers of equipment for my job and my hobby purposes as well.

It was funny that during my study we have much more better equipment compared to equipment when I started my first job.
So the low priced equipment is from my perspective focused only to hobby use and not for universities where you are making large quantities purchases with totally different prices.

The bug itself is not a big issue, but the willingness of supplier to fix the bug - it is what counts.