I mean, this is an issue you'd have even on the SDS2000X series. Once you make the timebase long enough you can't maintain the native sample rate. The additional memory helps, of course, but doesn't eliminate the issue.
You never eliminate the issue, but making it 200X better goes a long way! Even the $500 SDS1104X-E can do up to a one million X zoom, something the Keysight models here won't despite their 'MegaZOOM' trademark.
That's certainly true. Ultimately, though, it depends on at what point the limitations are no longer tolerable.
It should be clear that despite the Keysight's limitations here, it works well enough for enough people that it sells reasonably well. And as noted by others, the Keysights do a good job of reducing (if not outright eliminating) aliasing artifacts.
Perhaps, but I don't understand making significant sacrifices in actual capability for that 'luxury feel' UX, especially for someone spending their own money.
It just depends on what you value and whether or not the reduction in capability will actually be a meaningful one for what you're going to be doing with it.
You shouldn't underestimate the importance of a good UI. An unresponsive UI is
frustrating. Yes, you can work around it or just live with it, but as soon as you use something that's truly responsive, you'll instinctively be reluctant to go back to using the unresponsive UI. If you've got both types of instruments, the one with the unresponsive UI will be relegated to the shelf except when its capabilities are needed for the task at hand.
The Keysight, for all its limitations, apparently does the job for the majority of situations. If it didn't, it wouldn't sell well at all.
If Siglent fixed its UI and made it responsive, they'd clean house, because at that point there'd be no compelling reason
at all to go with something like the Keysight. I believe (without proof) that the responsiveness and polish of the Keysight is a major factor in its continuing success.
My older Tek DSO has a UI that is several orders of magnitude less obtuse than the Siglent, but if I had to choose between them there would be no contest--I'll live with some amusing quirks to get the additional capability. I'm not dismissing the issue--setting up FFT on the Siglent is like a scope comedy skit next to the Tek. The Keysight (and Tek) models may have other advantages, but I don't know them well enough to comment.
There's a difference between a UI being "quirky" (meaning, the things you have to do to get it to do something aren't necessarily obvious at a glance) and a UI being
unresponsive. The Siglent's UI is the latter under many situations. I don't have much trouble getting at things with it, but I
do have trouble getting it to see my commands more often than I'd like. It's mainly an issue with the handling of the front panel. It's far more responsive to the touchscreen than to the front panel, though it still does sometimes take more time than it should to reflect the commanded changes.
EDIT, 4/2/2022: It turns out that I had hardware problems with at least the timebase encoder on the front panel, and quite possibly with some sort of connection issue between the encoder board and the rest of the scope. As such, I have to throw out all my prior experience with the front panel responsiveness of the scope, because it could easily be that I was running into a hardware issue with my scope and
not the coding of the UI. Don't get me wrong, it's still no Keysight, but it now seems to actually
respond to what I tell it to do. See
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/new-electricalcomputer-engineer-student-test-bench-equipment-recommendations/msg4091812/#msg4091812In any case, the point here is that the UI responsiveness is a major factor in the usability of the instrument, and usability, despite its independence from capability, has a huge effect on the willingness of the user to make use of the instrument when he has alternatives. It also has an effect on the willingness of the user to deploy the instrument for problems where it isn't strictly necessary. If the user dislikes using the instrument because of its UI, he'll refrain from using it unless he must. If the user enjoys using the instrument, he'll use it even when he doesn't have to.
There's a
reason Apple has been so successful over the years. They understand (or at least understood) the importance of having a good UI. Keysight does as well, it seems.