So I was looking at electronic loads as they seem like they should be a fairly standard piece of test equipment for a lab, and I could use one for some upcoming projects. However, I haven't really been able to find any that I would consider to be affordable for casual hobbyists like myself, the cheapest that I could find is probably the BK Precision BK8540. It's pretty basic, only has CC, CV and CR modes and doesn't appear to have any data logging or modes for battery testing etc. Any yet despite being such a simple device it retails for around £470-500 here in the UK, which is more than a lot of low end scopes!
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell they're relatively simple devices. Just a power FET or array to dissipate the power, heatsink/fan, microcontroller and some input circuitry. I've had a look for cheaper devices but all I can find is the really cheap chinese USB loads, or for slightly more there's some slightly beefier versions with a screw terminal but ultimately just the same bare PCB device with some 7-segment displays.
Does there really not exist anything in the £60-200 range in terms of electronic loads? I know the cheap chinese ones would probably be good enough for my purposes or I could probably make one fairly easily, but I would ideally like something that I can buy off the shelf that comes pre-calibrated, in a nice bench case and at least semi-programmable. You can get linear dc bench power supplies within this range (and even fairly high end ones for less than the cheapest loads!) and as far as I can tell, loads aren't any more complex than this.