Is the RiGOL DS1054Z still Dave's choice for under $500?

[JenniferG]

You missed it--the Siglent SDS1104X-E was on sale for a bit for $399.  I've no idea whether it will be again, but for the same price it would be the clear choice.  The Rigol would be in last place among the three scopes mentioned here, but it is still not bad.  I had one, the Siglent is clearly better.  The GW-Instek I haven't tried but those that have them seem to like them.

Where's the Black Friday deal? lol.  I'd grab one for $399 for sure

[Monkeh]

Was reading a bit about the Gwinstek GDS-1054B.  It doesn't have ANY serial decoding?  The Rigol DS1054Z has quite a bit in that regard.

A few hours of use will quickly disabuse you of the notion that the Rigol has serial decoding. It's a novelty at best.

[tautech]

Don't forget you can Bode plot on the Siglent. Sooner or later, one *has* to do some basic FRA. It has even be hacked so to allow Bode plotting with cheap non-Siglent AWGs. Like, the fy6900-6600 for sure.

OTOH, I find the 1104x-e is damn loud (no idea about 1054Z or Instek loudness).

FTFY

[Fungus]

I could be too as they keep knocking on our door but I don't see any advantage in taking them on.

You don't see any advantage in a really easy, fast, touch screen, portable oscilloscope?

Sooner or later, one *has* to do some basic FRA.

 

A few hours of use will quickly disabuse you of the notion that the Rigol has serial decoding. It's a novelty at best.

Compared to what? It's basic, sure, but it works. At this price point you won't get anything amazing from any of the others, either.

[EEVblog]

Ofcourse it is. Don't get fooled by the form factor; it is a full fledged bench oscilloscope. It has all the right features to make it a true bench oscilloscope. Rock solid firmware as well. It is not a 'typical' handheld/portable DSO-ish device that can only show some wiggly lines. You'd be wrong to leave the MicSig TO1000 (or one of the recent incarnations with knobs) out in a US $500 price bracket shootout.

It would be a $500 price bracket bench scope shootout.
If you don't like that then you are free to make your own shootout 

[2N3055]

I do believe the general concensus is that the Siglent is the more bang-per-buck option, but the Rigol is cheaper and still a pretty good option.
I don't know if my original 1054Z is still the current hardware and suitable for a modern shootout?

Don't forget to include GW Instek 1054B and MicSig TO1000 in such a shootout.

The Micsig is not a comparative bench scope.

Ofcourse it is. Don't get fooled by the form factor; it is a full fledged bench oscilloscope. It has all the right features to make it a true bench oscilloscope. Rock solid firmware as well. It is not a 'typical' handheld/portable DSO-ish device that can only show some wiggly lines. You'd be wrong to leave the MicSig TO1000 (or one of the recent incarnations with knobs) out in a US $500 price bracket shootout.

I partially disagree. It is something in between handheld and desktop scope.
I have Micsig STO1004 and had Rigol DS1074Z.
And I like Micsig but I bought it as a portable scope.
It has nice big screen, battery, filters in channels, etc. It is more responsive too.
But it has no statistics on measurements, list mode on decodes is text mode only and works in some separate acquisition mode. You cannot have both on the screen or even switch back and forth.
It can be used as a basic desktop scope, but even DS1000Z is more rounded in general. But decoding works better on Micsig for instance. And FFT is much better. So it, again, depends what is important to user. To some Micsig would be better, to some not.

[nctnico]

Ofcourse it is. Don't get fooled by the form factor; it is a full fledged bench oscilloscope. It has all the right features to make it a true bench oscilloscope. Rock solid firmware as well. It is not a 'typical' handheld/portable DSO-ish device that can only show some wiggly lines. You'd be wrong to leave the MicSig TO1000 (or one of the recent incarnations with knobs) out in a US $500 price bracket shootout.

It would be a $500 price bracket bench scope shootout.
If you don't like that then you are free to make your own shootout 

But why do you not qualify the TO1000 as a bench scope? By all means it is a bench scope. Just like the new (flat) Tektronix you reviewed. Or wouldn't you classify that as a bench scope either?

@2N3055: you do realise that you are just comparing feature sets here? On the contrary: the TO1000 can make videos of signals (which none of the other scopes have) and it has filtering (which Rigol & Siglent  don't have), the screen is much bigger and the memory of the current models is the biggest (70Mpts). On the Rigol decoding doesn't even seem to be useful... So yes, there are differences that affect usefullness for some use cases, but discarding the TO1000 series in a $500 dollar scope comparison just because of the form factor -and the current models do have knobs- is a mistake.

[JenniferG]

Ofcourse it is. Don't get fooled by the form factor; it is a full fledged bench oscilloscope. It has all the right features to make it a true bench oscilloscope. Rock solid firmware as well. It is not a 'typical' handheld/portable DSO-ish device that can only show some wiggly lines. You'd be wrong to leave the MicSig TO1000 (or one of the recent incarnations with knobs) out in a US $500 price bracket shootout.

It would be a $500 price bracket bench scope shootout.
If you don't like that then you are free to make your own shootout 

I like it because that's my dollar limit I set.  Seems like it would be a great video Perhaps Siglent, Rigol and Gwinstek will each send you a new unit for the shoot out?

[2N3055]

@2N3055: you do realise that you are just comparing feature sets here? On the contrary: the TO1000 can make videos of signals (which none of the other scopes have) and it has filtering (which Rigol & Siglent  don't have), the screen is much bigger and the memory of the current models is the biggest (70Mpts). On the Rigol decoding doesn't even seem to be useful... So yes, there are differences that affect usefullness for some use cases, but discarding the TO1000 series in a $500 dollar scope comparison just because of the form factor -and the current models do have knobs- is a mistake.

I said my opinion on featureset, you are correct. Some of the features you mention are not on sub 500$ scopes. I paid more than 500$ for mine too..

Please leave me out of your semantic dispute with Dave on "what does the desktop scope means".
My opinion on this is: His comparison, his rules...

Best,

[balnazzar]

Don't forget you can Bode plot on the Siglent. Sooner or later, one *has* to do some basic FRA. It has even be hacked so to allow Bode plotting with cheap non-Siglent AWGs. Like, the fy6900-6600 for sure.

OTOH, I find the 1104x-e is damn loud (no idea about 1054Z or Instek loudness).

FTFY

In which sense? 

[2N3055]

Don't forget you can Bode plot on the Siglent. Sooner or later, one *has* to do some basic FRA. It has even be hacked so to allow Bode plotting with cheap non-Siglent AWGs. Like, the fy6900-6600 for sure.

OTOH, I find the 1104x-e is damn loud (no idea about 1054Z or Instek loudness).

FTFY

In which sense? 

In a sense it was you that created in excess of 100 posts how it bothers you that it is so loud. And while there was an occasional user that did say they think noise is audible and they would like it to quieter or would use other scope for them because of that, you basically complained more about it than whole collective Internet combined...
That is some dedication, I give you that...

[Monkeh]

A few hours of use will quickly disabuse you of the notion that the Rigol has serial decoding. It's a novelty at best.

Compared to what? It's basic, sure, but it works. At this price point you won't get anything amazing from any of the others, either.

Compared to a piece of paper and doing it by hand, which actually produces accurate results.

Far better off with any generic FX2 based logic analyzer and sigrok - check your signal integrity with the scope, if you want to look at data, capture it into something useful.

[JenniferG]

No love from Amazon/Siglent today on the SDS1104X-E.  I was hopping it'd drop to $399 so I can buy it.  I'm not going to buy it until it's $399 again. It was $399 for a couple weeks earlier this month but I didn't know about the scope.

[MikeK]

No love from Amazon/Siglent today on the SDS1104X-E.  I was hopping it'd drop to $399 so I can buy it.  I'm not going to buy it until it's $399 again. It was $399 for a couple weeks earlier this month but I didn't know about the scope.

Maybe on Cyber Monday?

[JenniferG]

No love from Amazon/Siglent today on the SDS1104X-E.  I was hopping it'd drop to $399 so I can buy it.  I'm not going to buy it until it's $399 again. It was $399 for a couple weeks earlier this month but I didn't know about the scope.

Maybe on Cyber Monday?

Do you know of any good tools or apps that poll say Amazon to check price every 15 minutes or so?   It's such a time waster to keep manually checking every hour.

[MikeK]

No love from Amazon/Siglent today on the SDS1104X-E.  I was hopping it'd drop to $399 so I can buy it.  I'm not going to buy it until it's $399 again. It was $399 for a couple weeks earlier this month but I didn't know about the scope.

Maybe on Cyber Monday?

Do you know of any good tools or apps that poll say Amazon to check price every 15 minutes or so?   It's such a time waster to keep manually checking every hour.

* Putting "amazon price alert" into the googler returned a couple useful results
* camelcamelcamel.com
* write a Python script

[balnazzar]

That is some dedication, I give you that...

 

[EEVblog]

Ofcourse it is. Don't get fooled by the form factor; it is a full fledged bench oscilloscope. It has all the right features to make it a true bench oscilloscope. Rock solid firmware as well. It is not a 'typical' handheld/portable DSO-ish device that can only show some wiggly lines. You'd be wrong to leave the MicSig TO1000 (or one of the recent incarnations with knobs) out in a US $500 price bracket shootout.

It would be a $500 price bracket bench scope shootout.
If you don't like that then you are free to make your own shootout 

But why do you not qualify the TO1000 as a bench scope? By all means it is a bench scope. Just like the new (flat) Tektronix you reviewed. Or wouldn't you classify that as a bench scope either?

With the stand and the front bottom mounted inputs like a normal bench scope, plus controls, the Tek makes the grade as a bench scope. It's clearly designed as a bench scope with some portability in mind.
The Micsig TO1000 is literally a tablet scope only. Inputs are on the top not the front, and no front panel controls. It's clearly not a bench scope 
It literally says Tablet Oscilloscope on the front of it!
The Tek can kind of sorta be uised a table oscilloscope with it's dual battery and removable stand, but the inputs are still on the front like a normal bench scope. And it still has control like normal bench scope.

[JenniferG]

So weird, Siglent and "Siglent Technologies" aren't in Wikipedia.  And the Rigol entry has like 2 short paragraphs lol:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIGOL_Technologies

[JeremyC]

So weird, Siglent and "Siglent Technologies" aren't in Wikipedia.  And the Rigol entry has like 2 short paragraphs lol:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIGOL_Technologies

JenniferG, wikipedia and similar are great places, but they aren’t an oracle
You should check opinions about products in topic specific forums like this. Sure, you will read a lot of BS, argues between evangelist, etc. Take your time and “chew” it. For sure if you see again the SDS1104X-E below $400 it’s no brainier. In last 2 years I had this scope for 1 week at the time, and in my opinion it’s awesome scope in this price range, even at $499. One thing what bothered me was annoying, irregular noise coming from the cooling fan.

[james_s]

Whatever you decide to get, check the price on Tequipment, last I heard they still offered a discount for eevblog members. A friend of mine bought the Rigol a couple years ago, I've played around with it a few times and was fairly impressed, it offers a lot of bang for the buck and it's really compact.

[JenniferG]

So weird, Siglent and "Siglent Technologies" aren't in Wikipedia.  And the Rigol entry has like 2 short paragraphs lol:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIGOL_Technologies

JenniferG, wikipedia and similar are great places, but they aren’t an oracle
You should check opinions about products in topic specific forums like this. Sure, you will read a lot of BS, argues between evangelist, etc. Take your time and “chew” it. For sure if you see again the SDS1104X-E below $400 it’s no brainier. In last 2 years I had this scope for 1 week at the time, and in my opinion it’s awesome scope in this price range, even at $499. One thing what bothered me was annoying, irregular noise coming from the cooling fan.

I was just wanting to read a little bit about the company and found it odd no one made an entry in wikipedia for it.  Is there any mods which can be done to it to quiet down the fan? Like replace it with a better more silent one?

Btw. does the 2200 series scope for $999 have higher resolution ADC's?  How many does it have? 

[bdunham7]

I was just wanting to read a little bit about the company and found it odd no one made an entry in wikipedia for it.  Is there any mods which can be done to it to quiet down the fan? Like replace it with a better more silent one?

Btw. does the 2200 series scope for $999 have higher resolution ADC's?  How many does it have?

The fan noise depends a lot on where you put the scope and what is around it.  Some people have put quieter fans in, I personally don't see the point.

I assume you mean the SDS2104X+.  It has dual 2GSa/s 8-bit ADCs but through some simple trickery is able to work in a 10-bit mode with a maximum of 100MHz bandwidth.  The 10-bit mode works pretty well IMO, as can be shown by using the vertical zoom feature. 

[JeremyC]

I was just wanting to read a little bit about the company and found it odd no one made an entry in wikipedia for it.  Is there any mods which can be done to it to quiet down the fan? Like replace it with a better more silent one?

Btw. does the 2200 series scope for $999 have higher resolution ADC's?  How many does it have? 

I used to work in quiet environment and possibly the noise may be not a problem to others. Some people posted how to improve the fan.

The SDS2000X Plus does have 8bit ADC. The advertises “10 bit mode” applies only to acquisition mode, it’s only marketing trick. In summary you will get only 8 bit vertical resolution.
The 2104x plus it’s big step above the SDS1000X-E series. You can hack it to 500Mhz,
Check this link: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent-sds2000x-plus-hack/
built in 50MHz AWG (simplified, but good enough for Bode plot) generator and much more, etc. If you can spend the $999, it’s no brainier in my opinion, the offer will expire by end of this year.

I'm not an expert, but in my opinion you can trust Siglent no less than Rigol.

[JenniferG]

Thanks everyone for all the replies.  Someone on another forum said they recently purchased the Rigol HDO1074.  It's a 12 bit ADC and only $699?  I imagine it can be hacked eventually as well.

If I got the HD01074 instead of the Sigilents mentioned above, what would I be lacking ?  How does the UI and display performance compare between the them?   Seems like 12 bit ADC is a huge upgrade. SIXTEEN times the resolution!