Hi,
I'm looking to finally get an electronic DC load. Previously, I've used power resistors, but it's cumbersome. I then started researching and I realized that there were programmable loads with a great deal of features that would be very handy today, and others that would probably be great tomorrow.
Regardless of where I go, I find praise and criticism for both. There's always someone who finds them utterly useless, noisy, etc. My primary need is to test out both linear and switching power supplies, but battery testing and simulating noisy loads and how they affect other parts of a circuit is also very relevant.
I originally began looking at Rigol DL3021 and Sigilent SDL2021X-E. I thought I had decided on the SDL2021X-E, simply because the software seemed better, and it wasn't as noisy as the Rigol (I have a Rigol scope, and even though I love it, it drives me nuts sometimes).
Now, of course, as always, doubt sets in. And while perusing other loads at other dealers, I stumbled upon B&K Precision 8550, which for some reason seemed very attractive to me. It also boasted more features/better software, larger LCD and seemed more practical on the whole. Except for the backside, which has none of the connectivity of Rigol/Sigilent. I don't have any need for it now, as a USB stick with preprogrammed routines will work fine, but who knows.
Price wise of course, the 8550 is in a totally different bracket than SDL2021X-E. Forking out for the latter is still a large investment to me, but I'm also not foreign to spending bucks to get good stuff that will last and still prove useful 10-20 years on, as my projects and knowledge evolve.
Then, I read that B&K is simply ITech, only overpriced, and that's that. I know there are hundreds of threads like this, and I've tried my best to google around in the last couple of weeks, but right now I feel pretty stuck. Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated.