new killer scope in town - a true game changer from R&S - RTB2002 & RTB2004

[ci11]

R&S appears to be caught in a familiar quagmire that frustrates many traditional manufacturers as they do promo in new markets.

It is very likely that there are distributors AND dealers agreements in place that R&S has signed and cannot/will not circumvent. Many of these agreements are not only a drive to get more business but sometimes required by local anti-trust laws, even if R&S is the official "distributor". The key is that most local laws favor the seller setting the price, not the manufacturer whose customer is actually the distributor but not the end-user.

The price and promotional content discrepancy in various geographies show the growing pains of R&S getting into highly competitive market segments and their lack of preparedness to deal with its issues. Just having an attractive offering is only half the battle. only a highly coordinated and well-negotiated launch where everyone in the food chain gets the right amount of cash into their pockets will success then possibly follow.

Optimizing these realities require really seasoned and effective leadership at the helm.

[Joel_l]

Just looked up freeRTOS, looks interesting. I have a couple of roundtuit projects it might be interesting to try on.

How do you know, or how did you find out?

Does anybody know which operating system it uses?

FreeRTOS

It's mentioned in their open-source acknowledgement :
https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/dl_downloads/dl_osa/RTB_OpenSourceAcknowledgment_en_01.pdf

[Pinkus]

When you go to the page, try refreshing your browser, might be looking at an old cached version. I did go to it by clicking on your link.

Odd. Cleared cache, deleted browser history, tried on the phone too with same result.

Edit: added phone screenshot.

Don't look into your cart! Look at the product page (the link you added) - see pic attached. Though you can still put the item in your cart which does not make sense.

[lem_ix]

Options price is downright ridiculous. Instek gds-2072e is just a tad more than any one of those 3 serial decode options they sell.... i2c + spi separate from uart... nice .. Was actually interested in this 

[norks]

Looks like the promo is over at Newark. RTB2K-COM4 showing full retail price now, even with the 16 remaining in stock.

[pascal_sweden]

Frequency analysis mode: Due to the high-performance FFT functionality of the R&S®RTB2000 oscilloscopes, signals can be analyzed with up to 128 kpoints.

Does the FFT really only use 128 kpoints? That's very low!

Note that the new Siglent SDS1000X-E series (based on Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC architecture) uses 1Mpoints for FFT!

[WattSekunde]

They could have offered the launch deal themselves in Europe.

That would really piss off the distributors...

Which distributors? Check the R&S website and you'll see R&S does their own distribution in Europe.

In Europe R&S has an authorized distributors network [Datatec - Farnell - a.m.o. ... ] - and they also offer direct sales from their local sales organisation.
I prefer to buy directly from R&S to avoid that the unit has been catching dust in a werehouse and calibration period has almost expired - I am talking in general terms - had this once with LeCroy and
that will never overcome me a second time.
Dealing directly with R&S gives me also the opportunity to ask a loan unit for evaluation or sometimes one can buy these loan units with a nice discount.
Dealing directly with R&S gives me more satisfaction.


Yabba Dabba Doo !

Flinstone
55 Cobblestone Road
Bedrock

But they don't sell to a private person. You need a VAT number (Umsatzsteuer-Identifikationsnummer).

[Neganur]

Don't look into your cart! Look at the product page (the link you added) - see pic attached. Though you can still put the item in your cart which does not make sense.

What do you want me to say? Just because it looks like this for you does not mean that what I say is wrong. And the reason I placed it in the cart is to see if the cart software is working properly (should not allow me to place product that is sold out).

And if I now link the product page screenshot you will claim that I have not refreshed my page or cleared my cache. I find this a bit annoying, almost like IT support saying there is no problem (because their 'report an error' webpage form is malfunctioning).

Perhaps there is some other issue on their web server that serves old pages to phones or something, but I am not stupid - I get this page and it shows it available...(regardless of it in reality is not available if you would call them)

[deephaven]

Just for fun, I tried going to the TE website for the very first time just now and it showed the heavily discounted price and it allowed me to put it in the cart, complete with a free tool set 
No cache or phones were used!

[pm.llb]

Just for fun, I tried going to the TE website for the very first time just now and it showed the heavily discounted price and it allowed me to put it in the cart, complete with a free tool set 
No cache or phones were used!

Newark. 16 units on stock for 7920USD ...

[Joel_l]

Seems the price will fluctuate a bit before it settles down. The full bundle for $2080 seems to be a very good deal. I don't see this scope being a good value near the 8K fully loaded price. Seems there are too many other good options out there to make the normal $2080 for the 70MHz base unit not interesting. I'm anxious to get mine and see how it goes.

I hope the pricing does settle out at a reasonable price point or those of us that have them might find ourselves orphaned.

[Joel_l]

I don't know anything about this place but they still show the promo price.

http://www.techedu.com/Mixed-Signal-Oscilloscopes/Rohde-&-Schwarz-RTB2K-COM4/

[agdr]

Sure enough, as reported, it looks like the deal at Newark may be off but the deal at Tequipment might be back on as of 4/1/17. 

I'll take a guess at what is going on.  I've heard rumors that Tequipment has had several cancellations.  Could be that that by whatever rules are in place they are being allowed to resell the cancellations.  Newark never did seem to be very excited about the promo, given their late sales entry and complete lack of sales info about the bundle.  Newark is probably quite happy to be able to list the scope bundles at full price/profit and be done with the promo.

The interesting thing here is that if Tequipment is being allowed to resell cancellations then Test Equity may have permission too.  And I believe Test Equity has a Canadian operation.  The folks in Canada might want to check into the currest sales-to-Canada situation by phone with Tequipment and Test Equity.  Worst that can happen is another "no"! 

It is also possible the list price showing at Newark is just part of their database issues too.  Would be worth calling and checking to be sure before giving up on them.

Good luck and happy scope hunting! 

[mikeselectricstuff]

The whole promo thing has been something of a shambles... hopefully R&S will learn from it.

[ruairi]

TEquipment did have several cancelations and had 3 units available at the promo price on Thursday.  I know a guy who snagged one 

[pm.llb]

Seems the price will fluctuate a bit before it settles down. The full bundle for $2080 seems to be a very good deal. I don't see this scope being a good value near the 8K fully loaded price. Seems there are too many other good options out there to make the normal $2080 for the 70MHz base unit not interesting. I'm anxious to get mine and see how it goes.

I hope the pricing does settle out at a reasonable price point or those of us that have them might find ourselves orphaned.

Let me be straight:
R&S bundle for ~2K - Ok.Where to buy it ( in/to Europe)?
For 8K ? No way. I will rather buy :

http://www.siglent.eu/sds2304x.html
+
http://www.siglent.eu/catalog/product/view/id/1087/s/spl2016/category/146/
~2k$ and It's availabe without region limitations.

[pascal_sweden]

R&S should have used capacitors from Murata for reduced microphonics:

https://books.google.no/books?id=y0kGRzbh-owC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=microphonics+murata&source=bl&ots=-R_bm7FLG2&sig=zc2FjzQ2JzfsqAG_ZueYseqFH6s&hl=no&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiutsCil4TTAhWqK5oKHUq7AaIQ6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=microphonics%20murata&f=false

[2N3055]

This whole topic reads like a Monty Python...

This scope, fully unlocked, is a steal for 2000€, even for 3000€.  For 7000-8000€ it is not.
I personally am fed up by marketing tricks. It doesn't matter if 200 people got it for 2000€.. Keysight is GIVING AWAY that many scopes for free... 
But it doesn't mean anything to me because I'm not gonna get it..  Nor I will get R&S.. With Keysight at least there is reason (local laws) why not everybody can get it.
With R&S it is just stupid marketing games..

This bombastic and sensationalistic title would be true if they were selling them at that kind of price for real...

To me this scope is a failure at market positioning. If it were 2000-3000€ i would get it instead of second tier vendors. R&S is legendary company with great track record. Getting it at a competitive price instead of Rigol or such would be obvious choice... But at prices they are asking, they are saying their economy, entry level scope costs as much as some pro level equipment..

And 4 times as much as chinese brands that are getting better as we speak..

No, sorry, no killer scope, and certainly not a game changer.. It is just a nice scope from a R&S for way too much money.. That is actually old story with R&S and their former Hameg line..

It's a shame, because I like it..

[mrpackethead]

Yeah,  I'm not waiting for things to 'settle' down.. tommorrow i'm ordering a Keysight 3000T..   And as a bonus i get a 1000x for free!

[maginnovision]

Yeah,  I'm not waiting for things to 'settle' down.. tommorrow i'm ordering a Keysight 3000T..   And as a bonus i get a 1000x for free!

That was my first choice but even if I'd paid full price for R&S the equivalent 3000t would cost over 50% more. For what I'm doing with it the sample rate and wfms/s cost way too much. I'm a sucker for big high res screens too, so if they were the same price I probably would have picked R&S anyway. 3000T will probably be my next one.

[agdr]

That was my first choice but even if I'd paid full price for R&S the equivalent 3000t would cost over 50% more. For what I'm doing with it the sample rate and wfms/s cost way too much. I'm a sucker for big high res screens too, so if they were the same price I probably would have picked R&S anyway. 3000T will probably be my next one.

That is the way I'm looking at it.  I don't need more than 300MHz for what i do so the extra sample rate would be wasted.  But the price difference is massive even at full R&S list and I would be stuck with a 8 inch screen.  The 3000T/4000T series is getting long in the tooth itself.  I figure in a couple of years when it becomes time for the "next one" Keysight - and everyone else - will have their next generation of products out.  With this competition from R&S I'm hoping that will mean adopting a 10 bit (12 bit?) ADC and much lower noise front end, even better than the R&S.  And with all this price competition from the lower cost Rigol/Siglent units seems like Keysight just can't maintain these prices long term.  Seems that they will have to come down at least 20%-30% to stay competitive over the next few years.

[encryptededdy]

Honest question: Why do scopes all seem to have such crap screens? The RTB2000 seems to have a nice screen at 1280x800, but most other scopes have horribly low res screens: even the Keysight 3000T is only 800x480! It seems like you have to go to those high-end Windows-based scopes to get anything above 1024x768. Why?

Even if the waveform doesn't take advantage of the higher resolution, the menus, serial decode etc. benefit greatly from the higher resolution as demonstrated in Mike's review of the RTB2000.

[edavid]

I don't know anything about this place but they still show the promo price.

http://www.techedu.com/Mixed-Signal-Oscilloscopes/Rohde-&-Schwarz-RTB2K-COM4/

That site is also TEquipment.

[JoHr]

... even the Keysight 3000T is only 800x480!...

And this is just the  screen size. I estimate pure waveform area is about 640x400px. This is what the former Hameg scopes nearly had.

dspl. resolution vs. max. usable waveform area   ¹⁾

800x480	640x400	67%  on Keysight 1000x
800x480	600x400	62,5% on Keysight 2000 Class
800x480	640x400	67% on Keysight 3000 Class
800x600	640x480	64% on Keysight 4000 Class
640x480	600x400	78% on (all) Hameg HMO scopes
1280x768	1200x650	79% on RTB2000
800x480	700x400	73% on Rigol DS2000
800x480	700x400	73% on Rigol DS4000
480x234	~450x200	80% on Tek MSO 2000

Competing against the 2000 classes the RTB´s utilization of the screen is pretty good.
Sure ...  Tek seems to have an equivalant utilization of the screen in this class, but turning on measurement turns the scope into a peephole.

And that what a scope is build for - MEASUREMENTS

¹⁾ taken from screenshots, correct me if i´m wrong

[Deridex]

so after reading some posts here my conclusion of the scope is:
It would be a nice scope if the "whack-a-scope-issue" wouldn't be so bad. I wonder what R&S will do about it