New Tektronix 3 Series MDO

[EEVblog]

Might as well start a new thread for this.
There could still be a 4 Series MSO, that URL didn't write itself.

[EEVblog]

The SA is an option, so that means it'll be a software option.
As per the old MDO3000, it's probably $25-$50 in parts.

[simone.pignatti]

I bring this info from the other thread:
here is the model list:
MDO34 3-BW-100 oscilloscope 100MHz
MDO34 3-BW-200 oscilloscope 200MHz
MDO34 3-BW-350 oscilloscope 350MHz
MDO34 3-BW-500 oscilloscope 500MHz
MDO34 3-BW-1000 oscilloscope 1GHz

[EEVblog]

Price! 

[tv84]

https://www.newark.com/tektronix/mdo34-3-bw-1000-ddu-db-demo/demo-3-series-mixed-domain-oscilloscope/dp/02AH5648?CMP=AFC-SF-FC#

[EEVblog]

https://www.newark.com/tektronix/mdo34-3-bw-1000-ddu-db-demo/demo-3-series-mixed-domain-oscilloscope/dp/02AH5648?CMP=AFC-SF-FC#

US$16850

[Bud]

Discussion can end here 

[dermeister]

Not too surprised, the price is completely on par with the 1GHz offerings from R&S and Keysight. The lower bandwidth versions will probably be a lot cheaper.

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

Not too surprised, the price is completely on par with the 1GHz offerings from R&S and Keysight. The lower bandwidth versions will probably be a lot cheaper.

Agreed.  But wait until Monday - we've got something coming that is pretty disruptive 

BTW - scope looks nice.   

-Rich

[TheSteve]

The scope looks great, but as usual the Tek marketing department is either asleep or completely detached from tech.
Is the best thing they can figure out to say really that a touchscreen interface will be easy to learn "especially for smartphone users"?

[gslick]

The scope looks great, but as usual the Tek marketing department is either asleep or completely detached from tech.
Is the best thing they can figure out to say really that a touchscreen interface will be easy to learn "especially for smartphone users"?

I also thought that stuck out a bit. Maybe that is part of an appeal to the educational market where students have used smartphones for years, but never an oscilloscope?

[maginnovision]

Other than the cheapest scopes is a touchscreen even interesting enough to make it a significant bit of your marketing? It's half the blurb... I guess we'll know more about what they're thinking when they're officially launched.

[EEVblog]

Other than the cheapest scopes is a touchscreen even interesting enough to make it a significant bit of your marketing? It's half the blurb... I guess we'll know more about what they're thinking when they're officially launched.

It's look and work exactly like the 5 Series.

[EEVblog]

Not too surprised, the price is completely on par with the 1GHz offerings from R&S and Keysight. The lower bandwidth versions will probably be a lot cheaper.

Agreed.  But wait until Monday - we've got something coming that is pretty disruptive 

Woah, hang on, you can't just come in here and drop a bomb and leave us hanging!

[EEVblog]

Not too surprised, the price is completely on par with the 1GHz offerings from R&S and Keysight. The lower bandwidth versions will probably be a lot cheaper.

 Will be interesting to see if the 100MHz version has the 1GHz hardware...

[EEVblog]

It's now removed from their educational website home page

[dermeister]

Pretty sure Rich is talking about this, as someone found in the RTB scope thread. Pretty steep discounts for the top end MSOs with the app bundle.

[bitbanger]

It will be interesting to see if they start to flesh out the sub-350MHz market. Just steered a colleague who needed a basic scope for work away from a new DPO2000 series Tek that optioned up, cost nearly $5k. Comparable Keysight was $1900. No brainer. Glad to see Tek continuing to evolve (though the 6-series was way out of the stratosphere for price) but man are they seemingly out of touch with the market. To be fair Agilent is getting long in the tooth with the 4000 series as well.

[klaus11]

MDO34 3-BW-100 - 3-SERIES MIXED DOMAIN OSCILLOSCOPE = 4600USD, 100MHz = 4600USD.

https://www.newark.com/tektronix/mdo34-3-bw-100/3-series-mixed-domain-oscilloscope/dp/02AH4128?st=MDO34%203-BW-100

[maginnovision]

Other than the cheapest scopes is a touchscreen even interesting enough to make it a significant bit of your marketing? It's half the blurb... I guess we'll know more about what they're thinking when they're officially launched.

It's look and work exactly like the 5 Series.

Right, I'm curious about their marketing strategy.

[AndyC_772]

"...helps teach mixed signal design..."

OK, so it's a cut-down, relatively inexpensive educational tool, right?

€15080 

[EEVblog]

"...helps teach mixed signal design..."
OK, so it's a cut-down, relatively inexpensive educational tool, right?
€15080 

To be fair, the schools would be buying the 100MHz model

[maginnovision]

"...helps teach mixed signal design..."

OK, so it's a cut-down, relatively inexpensive educational tool, right?

€15080 

How else do you justify tuition if you don't have fancy toys.

[tv84]

https://www.newark.com/tektronix/mdo34-3-bw-200/3-series-mixed-domain-oscilloscope/dp/02AH4130?ost=MDO34+3-BW-200&ddkey=https%3Aen-US%2FElement14_US%2Fsearch

MDO34 3-BW-100 -  3-SERIES MIXED DOMAIN OSCILLOSCOPE - $4,600.00
MDO34 3-BW-200 -  3-SERIES MIXED DOMAIN OSCILLOSCOPE - $5,150.00
MDO34 3-BW-350 -  3-SERIES MIXED DOMAIN OSCILLOSCOPE - $9,600.00
MDO34 3-BW-500 -  3-SERIES MIXED DOMAIN OSCILLOSCOPE - $12,900.00
MDO34 3-BW-1000 -  3-SERIES MIXED DOMAIN OSCILLOSCOPE - $16,000.00
MDO34 3-BW-1000-DDU-DB-DEMO -  DEMO - 3-SERIES MIXED DOMAIN OSCILLOSCOPE - $16,850.00

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

Not too surprised, the price is completely on par with the 1GHz offerings from R&S and Keysight. The lower bandwidth versions will probably be a lot cheaper.

Agreed.  But wait until Monday - we've got something coming that is pretty disruptive 

Woah, hang on, you can't just come in here and drop a bomb and leave us hanging!

Like dermeister said, I gave some additional details in the RTB thread, but here is the gist:

It's in the same vein as our launch edition (albeit slightly more expensive), but without a quantity limit this time (limited in time - ends December 31, 2019).  It also goes across our RTC/RTB/RTM/RTA/RTH scopes, FPC spectrum analyzers and several of our power supplies/analyzers.  Basically they are fully loaded ("Complete") models - all channels (including digital for the scopes), highest bandwidth/frequency, all options (trigger/decodes, deepest memory, bode, modulation, etc, etc). 

Like I said in the other thread:  We've tried really hard to listen to customer feedback.  Projects change; you have money now, not sure if you'll be able to buy upgrades in the future; you want everything turned on for one price; etc.  You can still buy any of the "normal" models, but in a lot of cases, why would you?  When you can get a loaded (all options, even MSO/Bandwidth) Scope, SpecAn or Power Supply/Analyzer for one low price.  Is it for everyone?  No, but hopefully you all will see it as a step in the right direction (and vote with your money  ).

-Rich

[0xdeadbeef]

Didn't see anybody mentioning that they are giving away some scopes:
https://info.tek.com/www-new-gen-scope-june4-wc.html

[effectivebits]

Other than the cheapest scopes is a touchscreen even interesting enough to make it a significant bit of your marketing? It's half the blurb... I guess we'll know more about what they're thinking when they're officially launched.

It's look and work exactly like the 5 Series.

I wouldn't assume that. The Tektronix DPO/MSO5000 looked on the outside like a DPO7000, but operationally it functioned more like DPO/MSO4000 hardware - it didn't really work like a DPO7000.  I had several times I had to work customers through how to make their measurements because it just wasn't totally the same. There were/are certain limitations on sample rate, memory, triggering, etc that reflect its hardware pedigree, even though it has a more advanced user interface on it. Time will tell if the 3 series really functions like a 5 series (this product was launched after I left, so I'm eager to see the real specs). I suspect there will be limitations based on hardware - remember that a lot of cool features on oscilloscopes require hardware to support them.

[tv84]

https://www.newark.com/  has removed the info/pricing I copied a few msgs ago... 

[JPortici]

Other than the cheapest scopes is a touchscreen even interesting enough to make it a significant bit of your marketing? It's half the blurb... I guess we'll know more about what they're thinking when they're officially launched.

If it's properly done it's worth mentioning. A touch screen scope speeds up doing things considerably (especially for us of of a younger breed )
moving the trace and cursors and stuff around coarsly with your finger instead of battling with poorly implemented encoder acceleration

[Hydron]

moving the trace and cursors and stuff around coarsly with your finger instead of battling with poorly implemented encoder acceleration

I find the on screen keyboard is another _major_ benefit of a touchscreen scope - no more endless encoder spinning to enter a text string or number (e.g. a screenshot filename, trigger hold off value).

[EEVblog]

https://www.newark.com/  has removed the info/pricing I copied a few msgs ago... 

Tektronix marketing playing whack-a-mole 

[JPortici]

moving the trace and cursors and stuff around coarsly with your finger instead of battling with poorly implemented encoder acceleration

I find the on screen keyboard is another _major_ benefit of a touchscreen scope - no more endless encoder spinning to enter a text string or number (e.g. a screenshot filename, trigger hold off value).

YES. also that. The memory of using the onscreen keyboard on hte 1054Z keeps me awake at night

[mike1305]

Tektronix marketing playing whack-a-mole 

Definitely don't miss all those issues from my InfiniiVision BizDev days. Though it's so close to the launch date I doubt Tek cares too much. Not much competitors can do except launch promos like R&S, though theirs isn't really geared towards the EEVBlog audience.

[EEVblog]

Confirmed, the 3 series is just an MDO3000 with the new interface.
Maybe it has a faster processor and might be less sluggish, but everything else is the same.

[darkstar49]

Confirmed, the 3 series is just an MDO3000 with the new interface.

...which means it's (still) NOT an MDO !!! No way to trigger on freq dom events, and have both time & frequency domains traces synced...
For 16K, there's definitely a lot more to get !

[EEVblog]

[EEVblog]

https://www.tek.com/innovative-scopes

[gslick]

Doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement now that they are officially announced?

Here's another video that has been released on at least a couple of channels today:

Tektronix- 3 Series MDO Technical Overview

[maginnovision]

They've got beautiful displays but if the 3 is mostly a holdover I don't care. The 4 is outside my budget but it looks good but sort of an odd middle scope between 3 and 5. Although Keysight 3000 vs 4000 is similar, as well as R&S 3000 vs 4000. Seems it's difficult to really do enough to justify other than having something in that segment. Keysight, R&S and Tek should all ditch one of them.

[EEVblog]

Doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement now that they are officially announced?

The problem is two fold:
1) The 3 Series is just rehashed MDO3000 hardware. And the 4 Series is the same as the 5 Series but a bit cheaper and bit less capable. So nothing really that new there.

2) People on forums like this don't really get excited by higher priced tools, it's the value for money ones that generate a lot of hype and continued discussion. Look at the R&S RTB2000, it's actually not a cheap scope, but R&S did some initial marketing that was incredible value for money, so people flocked to it and now that a lot of people have one as result there is more continued talk about it.

[snoopy]

Doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement now that they are officially announced?

The problem is two fold:
1) The 3 Series is just rehashed MDO3000 hardware. And the 4 Series is the same as the 5 Series but a bit cheaper and bit less capable. So nothing really that new there.

2) People on forums like this don't really get excited by higher priced tools, it's the value for money ones that generate a lot of hype and continued discussion. Look at the R&S RTB2000, it's actually not a cheap scope, but R&S did some initial marketing that was incredible value for money, so people flocked to it and now that a lot of people have one as result there is more continued talk about it.

Maybe worth getting the new MDO3 and comparing with the MDO3000 you have to see if there are any improvements ? It seems the new user interface would require much more CPU grunt than the previous model.

I believe R&S have a new deal going for the rest of the year

[Eric_S]

Doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement now that they are officially announced?

The problem is two fold:
1) The 3 Series is just rehashed MDO3000 hardware. And the 4 Series is the same as the 5 Series but a bit cheaper and bit less capable. So nothing really that new there.

2) People on forums like this don't really get excited by higher priced tools, it's the value for money ones that generate a lot of hype and continued discussion. Look at the R&S RTB2000, it's actually not a cheap scope, but R&S did some initial marketing that was incredible value for money, so people flocked to it and now that a lot of people have one as result there is more continued talk about it.

People do like to talk about things that they own and can experience and play with themselves *looks at TEA thread*.

But to be fair, people also get a bit excited, albeit for a shorter time, for alien level test equipment (I'm looking at you, Monster(TM) Keysight scope).

It's kinda an inverted bell curve, big value and crazy uber tech goes down well. Kinda neat but middle of the road test equipment that you'll never ever be able to get? Not so much.

[fcb]

Weird low key launch - was expecting half-dozen video reviews from the usual suspects, editorials, tear-downs etc...

I had the 5 series in the lab recently, very nice unit - for the BW I wanted it was eye-wateringly expensive.

MDO32 (100MHz/2ch) £3130
MDO32 (1GHz/2ch) £9830
MSO44 (1GHz/4ch) £15700

What would be great would be a 1GHz 2ch without the mixed-domain for about £6K to replace my ageing 500MHz HP's.

[maginnovision]

Weird low key launch - was expecting half-dozen video reviews from the usual suspects, editorials, tear-downs etc...

I had the 5 series in the lab recently, very nice unit - for the BW I wanted it was eye-wateringly expensive.

MDO32 (100MHz/2ch) £3130
MDO32 (1GHz/2ch) £9830
MSO44 (1GHz/4ch) £15700

What would be great would be a 1GHz 2ch without the mixed-domain for about £6K to replace my ageing 500MHz HP's.

That's pretty much the SDS5000X price, maybe look at that. For some more, I think, the RTM3000(10K usd, may need forwarder).

[snoopy]

Weird low key launch - was expecting half-dozen video reviews from the usual suspects, editorials, tear-downs etc...

I had the 5 series in the lab recently, very nice unit - for the BW I wanted it was eye-wateringly expensive.

MDO32 (100MHz/2ch) £3130
MDO32 (1GHz/2ch) £9830
MSO44 (1GHz/4ch) £15700

What would be great would be a 1GHz 2ch without the mixed-domain for about £6K to replace my ageing 500MHz HP's.

I found these videos

[0culus]

Doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement now that they are officially announced?

The problem is two fold:
1) The 3 Series is just rehashed MDO3000 hardware. And the 4 Series is the same as the 5 Series but a bit cheaper and bit less capable. So nothing really that new there.

2) People on forums like this don't really get excited by higher priced tools, it's the value for money ones that generate a lot of hype and continued discussion. Look at the R&S RTB2000, it's actually not a cheap scope, but R&S did some initial marketing that was incredible value for money, so people flocked to it and now that a lot of people have one as result there is more continued talk about it.

People do like to talk about things that they own and can experience and play with themselves *looks at TEA thread*.

But to be fair, people also get a bit excited, albeit for a shorter time, for alien level test equipment (I'm looking at you, Monster(TM) Keysight scope).

It's kinda an inverted bell curve, big value and crazy uber tech goes down well. Kinda neat but middle of the road test equipment that you'll never ever be able to get? Not so much.

Besides, for those of us who are considering dropping some cash, it's far more cost effective to go with one of those promo bundles R&S is running this year, where you get a fully unlocked instrument for 40-50% off as far as I can tell.

[EEVblog]

I found these videos

There is just something wrong about a company unboxing their own product...

[snoopy]

I found these videos

There is just something wrong about a company unboxing their own product...

Did you think that scope had already been unboxed ? I just found it strange that the scope did not come in any protective bag or foam wrapping ?

[fcb]

The SDS5000X series looks like I fits the bill, just rather spring a bit more for a Tek or Keysight.  Looked at the R&S stuff, just don't need the discounted options.  Base price is similar.

Back to the 3/4 series launch.  Have Tek gone early to market and have few built? Stockists seem to be on back-order.

[tszaboo]

Doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement now that they are officially announced?

Well, I went on some websites. Checked the price. Looked at the full feature MSOX3104T on the other test bench, did a little comparison:
- Has bigger screen
- Slow GUI
- Tektronix, so eventually you will find something disappointing
- Confusing "sacrifice an analog channel for digital inputs"deal.
- Very expensive options

To get excited, it needs to offer something that enables you to do something that wasnt possible before. This one comes with expected pricing, expected options,  expected specifications. Someone will buy it, when they need a new scope and the RNG will throw Tek. Unless you already bought a scope with the same specs for half the price.
And yes, meanwhile Rohde is selling their 16 bit scope at a very good price. BTW at these prices, you are usually spending someone else's money on the scope anyway.

[LapTop006]

I found these videos

Well those were handy. I'm impressed by how slow their UI response is, combined with some of the things it lacks over the 5 series I guess that puts the 4 off the table as a backup scope.

Hopefully someone smashes the screen on a 5 and flogs it off cheap at some point, the math & analysis features do look nice.

As others have said, you really have to wonder if any of the Tek folk have used a current Keysight 3-6k series, sure the Tek wins on probes & some of the neat analysis you can do on the 5 series, but actual usability looks much worse.

[EEVblog]

BTW at these prices, you are usually spending someone else's money on the scope anyway.

I don't think Tek are getting any business at all from people spending their own money. Not hobbyists, not one-man bands, not small business with a few employees.
They may not care, and that's fine of course, chase the big end of town is not a bad option, but it's why no one really seems to care about the new "Series" scopes.

[tv84]

Before the price release it's was a nice ride.

Now we came down back to earth and it's business as usual...

At least, I wish the hobby market adopts the bigger screens layout.

[fcb]

I had a 4 series in the lab last week - nice scope definitely.  But by the time you have a decent spec. it is actually cheaper to buy the 5 series.. 

Struggling to understand what the 4 brings to the table, the only reason the rep could come up with was that it was 'smaller' and lab space is at premium.

I didn't even bother turning on the 3 series.

[0culus]

The pricing strategy on these is bloody outrageous, honestly. If you take just the 3 series, the base price for the lowest end model is approachable until you realize you need to spend at least another 3-4k on top of that to get the options necessary to make it worth your time. Probably a lot more. Pretty soon, it turns into a $10k instrument and if you want to spend that much, might as well save and put it toward a better model IMO. [edit] or go for a loaded scope from a Chinese OEM.

[edit again] the MDO option is even dumber...$50 worth of parts and a few thousand for a software unlock???

[tszaboo]

Before the price release it's was a nice ride.

Now we came down back to earth and it's business as usual...

At least, I wish the hobby market adopts the bigger screens layout.

This is quite good for the new 3, 4 and 5 series BMW!
Oh wait...

[EEVblog]

Before the price release it's was a nice ride.

Now we came down back to earth and it's business as usual...

At least, I wish the hobby market adopts the bigger screens layout.

This is quite good for the new 3, 4 and 5 series BMW!
Oh wait...

Wow, $3850 for the entry level 2CH job 
And $7550 for the entry 4 series, so much for their marketing slogan "Affordable on almost any budget" or whatever it was.
You'd want to really like that big screen GUI

[0culus]

I was actually in contact with one of their salespeople. I spoke my mind about how ridiculous the pricing was....haven't heard back from them since. 

[Hydrawerk]

Will there ever be a Tektronix 2 Series?? Will the 11 old MSO2000B be replaced sometimes? https://www.tek.com/oscilloscope/mso2000-dpo2000
Well, it has

Display resolution 480 horizontal × 234 vertical pixels (WQVGA).

  This was OK back in 2008.

[NuclearLabRat]

Mechanical engineer here to whom any scope is a horrible box filled with black magic only to be used when something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
I work instrumentation and am looking at an option to replace my group's current scope (it saves to 3.25" floppys) and was considering the 3 series.
Features I liked:
Very pretty screen. I like pretty colors
ability to decode ARINC 429 if you give TEK your first born
ability to decode UART


I see you all are not impressed with it for the price, but as we are not allowed to order Chinese products where I work, is there something else I should consider instead?
I don't think I need high bandwidth, I'm working with simple analog 0-10v signals and digital data streams.

[nctnico]

If you can't buy Chinese then don't buy Tektronix because their (lower end) products are made in China. Keysight is made in Malaysia but maybe China too nowadays. You could consider R&S which is produced in Europe. The RTB2004 has an option to decode Arinc and it is 10 bit as well.

[2N3055]

Mechanical engineer here to whom any scope is a horrible box filled with black magic only to be used when something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
I work instrumentation and am looking at an option to replace my group's current scope (it saves to 3.25" floppys) and was considering the 3 series.
Features I liked:
Very pretty screen. I like pretty colors
ability to decode ARINC 429 if you give TEK your first born
ability to decode UART


I see you all are not impressed with it for the price, but as we are not allowed to order Chinese products where I work, is there something else I should consider instead?
I don't think I need high bandwidth, I'm working with simple analog 0-10v signals and digital data streams.

Keysight 3000T series ? It is really fast, feels like analog scope.. Short acquisition memory though. Very good, nevertheless .
Rohde & Schwarz RTM3000 series? It's 10 bit, and 500uV/div, very nice for analog (sensors and such). Very long memory. Probably more expensive than Tek, but WAAAY better machine.

[2N3055]

If you can't buy Chinese then don't buy Tektronix because their (lower end) products are made in China. Keysight is made in Malaysia but maybe China too nowadays. You could consider R&S which is produced in Europe. The RTB2004 has an option to decode Arinc and it is 10 bit as well.

RTB2000 doesn't have AERO protocols AFAIK...
You need to go to RTM3000 to get them...

Or if PC USB scope is acceptable Picoscope does it all, and you can have 23" touch screen....

[NuclearLabRat]

I looked at the RTM3000, but haven't received a quote from them yet. Also looked at the wave surfer. Didn't look at the picoscope, but I don't think that will fly with management.
One limitation I should have mentioned is that no part of the order can be more than $5k. So we can buy the hardware(Tek scope and function generator option), and then add the software (bus decoders) later when the budget allows it.
As long as the company is not based in China, I don't think the bureaucrats here will notice where it is made.
I also looked at the HP scope, but Tek gives our company a deal and so it is cheaper.

[tautech]

As long as the company is not based in China, I don't think the bureaucrats here will notice where it is made.

So rebrands are OK then ?

[snoopy]

If you can't buy Chinese then don't buy Tektronix because their (lower end) products are made in China. Keysight is made in Malaysia but maybe China too nowadays. You could consider R&S which is produced in Europe. The RTB2004 has an option to decode Arinc and it is 10 bit as well.

Keysight have a major R&D and manufacturing hub in Malaysia and it looks pretty polished. Nothing to worry about in terms of quality

[EEVblog]

One limitation I should have mentioned is that no part of the order can be more than $5k. So we can buy the hardware(Tek scope and function generator option), and then add the software (bus decoders) later when the budget allows it.

Any decent company or dealer will understand such capex limitations and do a custom invoice deal accordingly, just ask them.

[EEVblog]

Will there ever be a Tektronix 2 Series?? Will the 11 old MSO2000B be replaced sometimes? https://www.tek.com/oscilloscope/mso2000-dpo2000

Almost certainly. Don't expect it to compete well on price though.

[JPortici]

As long as the company is not based in China, I don't think the bureaucrats here will notice where it is made.

So rebrands are OK then ?

yeah, let's get the rebadged siglent at 2.5x the price from lecroy

[tautech]

As long as the company is not based in China, I don't think the bureaucrats here will notice where it is made.

So rebrands are OK then ?

yeah, let's get the rebadged siglent at 2.5x the price from lecroy

I'm sure the BK Precision version is cheaper than LeCroy.

[NuclearLabRat]

Mechanical engineer here to whom any scope is a horrible box filled with black magic only to be used when something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
I work instrumentation and am looking at an option to replace my group's current scope (it saves to 3.25" floppys) and was considering the 3 series.
Features I liked:
Very pretty screen. I like pretty colors
ability to decode ARINC 429 if you give TEK your first born
ability to decode UART


I see you all are not impressed with it for the price, but as we are not allowed to order Chinese products where I work, is there something else I should consider instead?
I don't think I need high bandwidth, I'm working with simple analog 0-10v signals and digital data streams.

Keysight 3000T series ? It is really fast, feels like analog scope.. Short acquisition memory though. Very good, nevertheless .
Rohde & Schwarz RTM3000 series? It's 10 bit, and 500uV/div, very nice for analog (sensors and such). Very long memory. Probably more expensive than Tek, but WAAAY better machine.

I am currently leaning towards the RTM3000 based on your advice (my boss nixed my idea of getting the RTM2000 and a Micsig tablet for Arinc and UART and portability), but I have now gone 3 days without them responding to my many requests for a quote. Does anyone know if this is expected from R&S or if it is an anomaly?

Finally, in the review of the R&S RTM3000 posted on this forum it mentioned that the large memory, while nice, could cause the RTM3000 to feel laggy. Does anyone know if this something I will notice compared to the 3 series?
Thanks again for all your time.

[nctnico]

The Tektronix likely slows down when using math. Keysight and R&S (and others too) use a decimated data set for math operations. This makes math fast but can introduce errors in some corner cases. AFAIK Tektronix uses the actual sampled data which always gives a correct result but it also means that it will need to process much more data.

If you have trouble getting a quote then you should contact Rich from R&S who is active on this forum.

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

Mechanical engineer here to whom any scope is a horrible box filled with black magic only to be used when something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
I work instrumentation and am looking at an option to replace my group's current scope (it saves to 3.25" floppys) and was considering the 3 series.
Features I liked:
Very pretty screen. I like pretty colors
ability to decode ARINC 429 if you give TEK your first born
ability to decode UART


I see you all are not impressed with it for the price, but as we are not allowed to order Chinese products where I work, is there something else I should consider instead?
I don't think I need high bandwidth, I'm working with simple analog 0-10v signals and digital data streams.

Keysight 3000T series ? It is really fast, feels like analog scope.. Short acquisition memory though. Very good, nevertheless .
Rohde & Schwarz RTM3000 series? It's 10 bit, and 500uV/div, very nice for analog (sensors and such). Very long memory. Probably more expensive than Tek, but WAAAY better machine.

I am currently leaning towards the RTM3000 based on your advice (my boss nixed my idea of getting the RTM2000 and a Micsig tablet for Arinc and UART and portability), but I have now gone 3 days without them responding to my many requests for a quote. Does anyone know if this is expected from R&S or if it is an anomaly?

Finally, in the review of the R&S RTM3000 posted on this forum it mentioned that the large memory, while nice, could cause the RTM3000 to feel laggy. Does anyone know if this something I will notice compared to the 3 series?
Thanks again for all your time.

Sorry to hear you’re not getting a response. Please PM me your location and contact info and I’ll make sure you get taken care of.

-Rich

[Plasmateur]

Didn't see anybody mentioning that they are giving away some scopes:
https://info.tek.com/www-new-gen-scope-june4-wc.html

Where at on the page is this located? I'd like to enter!

[michalsykora]

Hi guys,

Tektronix 3 series main downside is, you can NOT have RF turned on (visible) at the same time as any other of the channels. I have not found this mentioned anywhere.

It is just two devices in one, in this case RF analyzer is really a useless benefit for me. You buy a scope with RF for time correlation, right?

BTW: The interface is really kind of slow, even the mouse is lagging behind more than on 4 series.

BTW2: This scope has 8 bit ADC (you can use up to 12bit HiRes mode). 3 series has different front end than 4 and 5 series (which are 12 bit and up to 16 bit in HiRes mode).

BTW3: 3 series LCD screen compared to 4 looks a bit diffused and not so sharp, kind of VGA like.

After finding the RF analyzer visibility limitation, I immediately went on to test 4 series.

- - - - - -



First of all, I am looking for a contemporary, fast and modern mixed signal scope.

This unit was MSO 46 @ 350MHz (weirdly), firmware 1.20.7, with full software licenses as a DEMO unit (400 days licence).

I am younger generation user who is used to touchscreens, I never owned an oscilloscope.
I hate wasting money on stuff that is mediocre, I preffer paying more for high quality / investment.

I need:
- logical analyzer, current probe, SPI, I2C, UART
- no fan, or a really silent fan
- well made, intuitive and fast UI
- good screen, quality build

Not needed but nice and futureproofing:
- separate Aux In
- separate Aux Out, Ref In, AFG
- RF analyzer on every channel

- - - - - -

I will try to include anything positive and negative i have found.

For me there are two main downsides on a "built from scratch, new and fast GUI":

1. Even though there is quite a bit of nice and well thought out touch and visual elements present in the GUI, its frame rate looks slow and somehow fixed to the framerate of the acquired data presentation update rate. The screen framerate should be independent and prioritized for fast GUI response we are used to from high tech smartphones and tablets, to match the quality of the hardware panel controls. I think to wait for data to be ready to be shown is a minor issue and to be expected, with a lot of processing that a sheer number of inputs, search, measure, math and other functions on this scope introduce. I hope I write it clearly.

2. I work in professional live audio industry, where touchscreens on mixing consoles and tablet / smartphone remote controls are very common. I am into UI, HMI, LEDs, audio, maybe some RF modules.
When debugging these mixed signal devices, there is quite a lot to watch for, and a lot of times I am looking at a broader context, then at solving some particular issue found, then again on the broader context and so on.
Tek 4 series allow to save a "Setup" to a file and then reload it, which is awesome idea BUT:
- The load of this file starts with a "default setup", when every probe is turned off, display is cleared, etc. etc.
- A complete load of setup file takes around 30 seconds, which is really too much, considering nothing has changed in the physical connections and settings. I just wanted to see a different combination / representation of the same data on the scope for particular purpose.
- If there were a possibility for the scope to compare actual state with the setup file I want to load, this "switchover" could take considerably shorter time and act similarly to a layer switching of faders on an audio mixing console, which makes your use of the panel and display context sensitive and therefore the operation is much quicker!

- - - - - -

Positive:
- execelent quality of buttons and knobs, especially those two cursor knobs
- every off (not visible) channel is aquired all the time, so you can turn on channels after the aquisition and the data is there to be shown
- 30A current probe is amazing
- matte display, option to have "black on white" color scheme for bright environments (and for export of waveform images to pdfs etc.)
- you can change channel color coding (including front panel buttons and led rings) to match your preference or project, trigger knob ring has the color of the source
- Aux In is simple edge trigger only - but handy

Weird quirks:
- 4 series has a better position of USB connectors than 3 series, but both 3 and 4 have them a bit too close to used buttons in the bottom of the panel.
- When selecting bus decode on analog channels, all of the predefined triggers are set to 0V, which is of little use and you have to change this to some milivolts above 0V to trigger.

Negative:
- Long startup time.
- Scope freezed 2 times in 5 hours.

- - - - - -

GUI:
- FHD display is so much more practical, where:
- - amazing feature to have is Overlay / Split view of channels
- - nice option to Group needed channels to a part of the Split window
- - possibility to resize individual parts of the screen, dragging of tables, plots etc.
- - unfortunately when turning channel off and on again, Grouping of the channel is lost
- - Grouped channels could have all their respective vertical division values displayed in adjacent columns on the right side where they are nicely colored

- a lot of scrolling is needed when multiple channels, busses and other features are active because of:
- - AFG, Horizontal and Trigger windows take unnecessary space on the bottom line of badges / buttons
- - Run/Stopped button take unnecessary space as well (Run / Single buttons on the top of the scope are perfectly visible and tell me far better what is happening)
- - Clock badge take unnecessary space. I have clock elsewhere in the workplace, not needed on the scope. If somebody likes to see the clock, it would be more adequate in the top right corner, where is plenty of space
- - DVM badge takes unneccesary space and could be well hidden inside Measure button

- "Add New..." section on right top corner has quite small buttons for my fingers, I kept pressing Note instead of Search quite often

- Missing Trash gestures to the bottom and side of the touchscreen as they are present on 3 series! You have to drag everything to trash (or invoke a right click menu) which is quite slow.

- Very nice would be an option to SWITCH Measure, Search and Bus decode to be done JUST on the visible data. As these processes are now done on whole captured data (which is sometimes very useful), it slows the unit down significantly. Of course you need a full data Bus decode for triggering from the Bus, but that is just one Bus decode, with much lower speed penalty.

Feature requests:

- Bus decode displayed charactes horizontal size to be maximized, not limited to length of the serial data. Binary representation is longer and not visible even if it could be, same applies for hex and ascii in various zoom levels. (check my photo)

- Push and hold on Channel/Math/Ref button to select it as a Trigger source?
(this would avoid some menu diving)

- Fast Setup switching.

- Faster GUI framerate. Say when you turn Bus decode ON, it takes long time (2-3 seconds) until the GUI lets you know, that you have pressed the button, just the menu did not appear yet.

- - - - - -

Unfortunately i did not have the possibility to check out the logical probe (and the firmware behaviour), as the sales person forgot to bring it. I have just seen the different 3 series logical probe, which is a very nice one.

- - - - - -

Tektronix 4 series needs quite a lot of work until I consider it to be worth the expense. Tektronix 3 series is a no go for me.

Apart from that, it is surprisingly modern and slick and much better than everything else I have seen so far.

Tektronix MSO 4 has potential to be the best mixed signal scope on the market.

PS: I think 4 series are MDO, and 3 series are MSO with RF, and that the official product names are other way around and confusing.

Thanks!

[snoopy]

Tek seems to have gone backwards with the Spectrum Analyzer on tyhe MDO3 compared to the MDO3000.

However the MDO4, 5 and 6 have Spectrum View which takes advantage of features built into the new ASIC's. I was told that this feature is available on each channel. Nice 

[EEVblog]

Sorry to hear you’re not getting a response. Please PM me your location and contact info and I’ll make sure you get taken care of.
-Rich

R&S responding on the forum in a Tektronix thread.
Guess who cares more... 

[EEVblog]

I just got a marketing email for the 3 series, up to $7k off + free modules.
Got me thinking, it's been a year now, and given how the release was kinda met with, meh on here, what's the thinking now?
Has anyone bought one or is considering buying one?, or did Tek miss the mark?

[snoopy]

I just got a marketing email for the 3 series, up to $7k off + free modules.
Got me thinking, it's been a year now, and given how the release was kinda met with, meh on here, what's the thinking now?
Has anyone bought one or is considering buying one?, or did Tek miss the mark?

No people are hanging out for a used MDO3000 at a good price and optioning them up with the crack

cheers

[Wuerstchenhund]

I just got a marketing email for the 3 series, up to $7k off + free modules.
Got me thinking, it's been a year now, and given how the release was kinda met with, meh on here, what's the thinking now?
Has anyone bought one or is considering buying one?, or did Tek miss the mark?

We rarely buy any Tek stuff but a couple of months ago I got a MDO34 1GHz unit with 3GHz "SA" as a demo because one of our clients' marketeers insisted we evaluate them as well (he knew the brand name).

It turned out to be only moderately better than the old MDO3000 (which was horrible). The "SA" is still horrible and performs worse than the cheapest Rigol/Siglent standalone box (which costs around the same as what Tek wants just for the upgrade from 1GHz to 3GHz SA), and the other specs (sample rate, memory) are pretty much the same as with the predecessor. The MDO3 UI is an improvement over the horrible MOD3k UI but still not great. And we found quite a few annoying bugs in the device. The client's engineers also didn't like it.

So in my view, yes, it's as "meh" as pretty much any other scope we got from Tek. Which is rather sad, really.

[EEVblog]

It turned out to be only moderately better than the old MDO3000 (which was horrible).

Yikes!

[Sighound36]

I have to agree having had both the 5 & 6 series scopes I can confirm they are under performers, clunky,very average UI way over priced for both software and probes. Ridiculous boot up time of around 6 minutes 12 bit dubious performance unless around 1Ghz on the 6 series probe prices like raw graphene costs!

Also our units crashed quite consistently.

Not having a downer on Tek here, have purchased two pieces of quality Tek test equipment very recently its just the scopes are way off the mark in many areas plus the silly pricing.

Look at LeCroy or Keysight equivalent offers much better all round imho

Some observations below

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rd-oscilloscope-acquisition-now-settled/msg3000760/#msg3000760

[0culus]

I think the pricing may be the worst part about these 3 and 4 series. The 3 series is attractively priced until you realize that is a base price with no options....and the options add up to 10k+ real fast. Sounds like anecdotal evidence says you aren't getting much for that money, either...

[Sighound36]

I think the pricing may be the worst part about these 3 and 4 series. The 3 series is attractively priced until you realize that is a base price with no options....and the options add up to 10k+ real fast. Sounds like anecdotal evidence says you aren't getting much for that money, either...

Good observation Oculus, in the UK a new base model 4 is very attractively priced 4 channel model at £6210 +vat @ 20% this is for a base 200Mhz model

For the 1 GHz model add another £15,300 (+vat ) LOL 

They are having a promotion on the power analysis bundle and two basic probes plus the deskew fixture another £3600 (actually a fair price)

£1K for the Arb genny
Extra memory to 62.5M  £2K
Each of the serial data options (12 in total) are £1600 EACH
Basic spectrum view (which is pants imho) £1570
Spectrum bandwidth to 500Mhz increase  £2500
Each of the 8 channel logic probes are £1550 each
the probes range from £482 t £28000, yes £28000 for the Tru view probe.

It adds up very easily for this outlay you could purchase one hellva of a scope (not Tek) and have some serious change left over.

Do they feel that business users just look at the basic price?
This is joke pricing

[0culus]

Yeah, it's insane. Even if I was buying for a business with a big pile of cash on hand, I'd likely look elsewhere to get more for my money. I don't know if R&S is still doing it, but last year they were offering a fully loaded scope for $9999 US. I don't recall what kind of probes you got with the deal, but it included all options unlocked! No small amount of change still, but a hell of a deal compared to the 3 and 4 series if you have the disposable income (or budget if you are a business).

[Rich@RohdeScopesUSA]

Yeah, it's insane. Even if I was buying for a business with a big pile of cash on hand, I'd likely look elsewhere to get more for my money. I don't know if R&S is still doing it, but last year they were offering a fully loaded scope for $9999 US. I don't recall what kind of probes you got with the deal, but it included all options unlocked! No small amount of change still, but a hell of a deal compared to the 3 and 4 series if you have the disposable income (or budget if you are a business).

We're still doing it until the end of June.     Certainly not something a hobbyist would likely buy, but for a fully loaded, 4 analog plus 16 digital and 1GHz of BW, it's a pretty good deal and allows some companies the ability to get way more than they expected for their budget.

-Rich

[snoopy]

Yeah, it's insane. Even if I was buying for a business with a big pile of cash on hand, I'd likely look elsewhere to get more for my money. I don't know if R&S is still doing it, but last year they were offering a fully loaded scope for $9999 US. I don't recall what kind of probes you got with the deal, but it included all options unlocked! No small amount of change still, but a hell of a deal compared to the 3 and 4 series if you have the disposable income (or budget if you are a business).

Test equipment is a bit like cars. As soon as you drive them out of the lot their value drops considerably. Explains why ebay is doing well with 2nd hand gear

[0culus]

Yeah, it's insane. Even if I was buying for a business with a big pile of cash on hand, I'd likely look elsewhere to get more for my money. I don't know if R&S is still doing it, but last year they were offering a fully loaded scope for $9999 US. I don't recall what kind of probes you got with the deal, but it included all options unlocked! No small amount of change still, but a hell of a deal compared to the 3 and 4 series if you have the disposable income (or budget if you are a business).

Test equipment is a bit like cars. As soon as you drive them out of the lot their value drops considerably. Explains why ebay is doing well with 2nd hand gear

That's true, but it depends on the gear. Stuff like network analyzers that cover 26.5GHz and beyond still command pretty steep prices (even if they are a fraction of the original purchase price). Same goes for wideband oscilloscopes.

[snoopy]

Tektronix 4 Series MSO vs Keysight 4000A X-Series Oscilloscopes

https://www.tek.com/blog/tektronix-4-series-mso-vs-keysight-4000a-x-series-oscilloscopes

[Sighound36]

Just to redress the balance a little, below is the most comprehensive comparison of current digital oscilloscopes from many ranges and vendors.

https://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/comparing-high-resolution-oscilloscope-design-approaches-wp.pdf

 

[snoopy]

Depends who writes it of course. Watched this one last night !

[Someone]

Depends who writes it of course.

Can't play whack-a-mole with all the marketing half-truths that get pushed out as they are just too numerous.

Just to redress the balance a little, below is the most comprehensive comparison of current digital oscilloscopes from many ranges and vendors.

That document looks at it from a very specific viewpoint, taking the assumption that those are the important requirements for the user. Just as the "competitive" comparisons start with the assumption their baseline product is what you wanted to start with. As always the important requirements are application specific and can't be generalised to a global comparison.

[nctnico]

Depends who writes it of course.

Can't play whack-a-mole with all the marketing half-truths that get pushed out as they are just too numerous.

I agree. These 'comparisons' are utterly useless. Not even worth watching for fun.

[snoopy]

When it's done by an independent youtuber it's got a bit more credibility

[elektropionir]

Everything in this thread is pretty much what I have come to expect from Tektronix. Despair inducing prices and premium marketing BS.
Few years ago when Lecroy started pushing 12bit scopes, there was an article on tek homepage about how nobody needs 12bit scopes

Nevertheless, it is really sad to watch the complete hollowing out of once prosperous and iconic USA companies by these finance scumbags and private equity vampires.

[snoopy]

Everything in this thread is pretty much what I have come to expect from Tektronix. Despair inducing prices and premium marketing BS.
Few years ago when Lecroy started pushing 12bit scopes, there was an article on tek homepage about how nobody needs 12bit scopes

Nevertheless, it is really sad to watch the complete hollowing out of once prosperous and iconic USA companies by these finance scumbags and private equity vampires.

Tek even made a video about it I believe

[Sighound36]

Some very valid points chaps, once you cut through the marketing BS and have the scopes to live with for a couple of weeks that is when the wheat from the chaff becomes quite obvious. Also you need to take into account the applications you are looking to really investigate and selecting the most suitable option for the purpose

We had on loan over a period of 2 months a R&S RTO2044, A Keysight S series 8Ghz, A Tek MSO654 8Ghz and the Wavepro 804HD-MS so we really did have first hand experience with all of these upper mid range scopes.

If we would have not plumped for the leCroy, the Keysight would have been next easily.

The Tek last and the R&S third, I just do not like its interface, however others it will be different 

When looking at options in this range there is no substitute for decent hands on daily use.

[snoopy]

I believe Spectrum View is available at no additional cost on the Tek MSO 5 and 6 (optional for the MSO 4) ! This is like having a time correlated spectrum analyzer for each channel. Did you get to use it by any chance in your evaluations ?

[james_s]

It's such a shame what has happened to Tek. I absolutely love the TDS3000 and TDS700 series scopes, but pretty much everything Tek has offered since then has missed the mark IMO.

[Wuerstchenhund]

It's such a shame what has happened to Tek. I absolutely love the TDS3000 and TDS700 series scopes, but pretty much everything Tek has offered since then has missed the mark IMO.

Tek has missed the mark for a lot longer than that. It's demise started when analog scopes became a dead-end, and Tek has shown ever since that they never really 'got' digital scopes and would rather still make analog scopes.

Most of Tek's DSOs have been pretty lackluster, often hampered by weird design decisions and a slow architecture, and that includes the TDS700 Series. There were some bright spots, though, such as the TDS200 (which introduced the lunchbox format, allthough they weren't the only ones, Iwatsu had a similar scope back then which was rebaded by LeCroy), or the TDS3000 which could be battery operated. Still, both scopes were painfully slow, and aside from the form factor or battery didn't offer much over scopes from other brands. And the fact that Tek carried both well into the 2000's is testament to the general lack of innovation when it comes to scopes.

The really sad part is that they still don't seem to understand the DSO market, even after escaping the cust-cutting culture of Danaher, and I wonder how long they can afford to bleed market share while mostly relying on a brand name that was great some 30 years ago.

[Sighound36]

I believe Spectrum View is available at no additional cost on the Tek MSO 5 and 6 (optional for the MSO 4) ! This is like having a time correlated spectrum analyzer for each channel. Did you get to use it by any chance in your evaluations ?

Hello Snoopy

Yes I did use the spectrum view most days as this is an integral part of our design remit. I have attached some images below
Being frank its not that good, it can be helpful if you do not have access to a half reasonable SA, as a guide its fine and will give you a good indication of any possible FFT harmonic and spurious issues. The display isn't bad at all, the unit I was loaned came with every option and weighed in at well over £100K (as I suspect did the LeCroy in fairness).

Just to put this into perspective the 8Ghz upgrade to this scope is £62,500 alone on top of the £21,600 starting price extra memory to 250Mpts per channel is £8500 Apps range form £1100 to £7000 (over 40 to choose from lol) extended 2Ghz BW on spectrum view is included but £4130 is required for the frequency Vs time option. All plus 20% vat of coarse so I suspect over £130K fully optioned up without anything other than the stock probes!

For that outlay you could opt for a Rigol or Siglent (We love Tautech really  ) RTA which offer a better solution for pretty much the cost of the Spectrum view upgrade on the 6 series Tek

They preform far better and you have a 40Mhz real time bandwidth as well (I have one of these units and did the comparison at the same time)

I have also included some images of the LeCroy Wavepro's spectrum view for you as well it to was a much better solution and I feel more accurate as well, I also pit the Wave pro against the Rigol RTA as well that was much closer indeed.

Now yesterday the Danny Bogoff show launched they new mini UXR for the pauper's brigade that was 6Ghz and had a built in RTA how we do not know yet (pretty sure TSP will be doing a review as we speak!) that was $106K (lol) but the point is what are you getting for your outlay???

I am not really bashing Tek, like I have said before we have three pieces of their equipment and its very good but their scopes and pricing are just (old English phrase here) "pissing in the wind" with the competition at the moment imho

[snoopy]

It's such a shame what has happened to Tek. I absolutely love the TDS3000 and TDS700 series scopes, but pretty much everything Tek has offered since then has missed the mark IMO.

Tek has missed the mark for a lot longer than that. It's demise started when analog scopes became a dead-end, and Tek has shown ever since that they never really 'got' digital scopes and would rather still make analog scopes.

Most of Tek's DSOs have been pretty lackluster, often hampered by weird design decisions and a slow architecture, and that includes the TDS700 Series. There were some bright spots, though, such as the TDS200 (which introduced the lunchbox format, allthough they weren't the only ones, Iwatsu had a similar scope back then which was rebaded by LeCroy), or the TDS3000 which could be battery operated. Still, both scopes were painfully slow, and aside from the form factor or battery didn't offer much over scopes from other brands. And the fact that Tek carried both well into the 2000's is testament to the general lack of innovation when it comes to scopes.

The really sad part is that they still don't seem to understand the DSO market, even after escaping the cust-cutting culture of Danaher, and I wonder how long they can afford to bleed market share while mostly relying on a brand name that was great some 30 years ago.

Surely you're exaggerating aren't you ?? TDS700 brought out InstaVu with up to 400,000 waveform updates a second which could spot most glitches that other scopes were blind too. It was the forerunner to DPO which also was an industry first. You are right Tek built analog functionality into their digital scopes and now everyone is copying it !

For the new Tek MSO's I can see one advantage of that architecture that other people are not talking about in that you don't lose ADC resolution when you have more than one channel displayed on the screen at the one time.

cheers

[snoopy]

I believe Spectrum View is available at no additional cost on the Tek MSO 5 and 6 (optional for the MSO 4) ! This is like having a time correlated spectrum analyzer for each channel. Did you get to use it by any chance in your evaluations ?

Hello Snoopy

Yes I did use the spectrum view most days as this is an integral part of our design remit. I have attached some images below
Being frank its not that good, it can be helpful if you do not have access to a half reasonable SA, as a guide its fine and will give you a good indication of any possible FFT harmonic and spurious issues. The display isn't bad at all, the unit I was loaned came with every option and weighed in at well over £100K (as I suspect did the LeCroy in fairness).

Just to put this into perspective the 8Ghz upgrade to this scope is £62,500 alone on top of the £21,600 starting price extra memory to 250Mpts per channel is £8500 Apps range form £1100 to £7000 (over 40 to choose from lol) extended 2Ghz BW on spectrum view is included but £4130 is required for the frequency Vs time option. All plus 20% vat of coarse so I suspect over £130K fully optioned up without anything other than the stock probes!

For that outlay you could opt for a Rigol or Siglent (We love Tautech really  ) RTA which offer a better solution for pretty much the cost of the Spectrum view upgrade on the 6 series Tek

They preform far better and you have a 40Mhz real time bandwidth as well (I have one of these units and did the comparison at the same time)

I have also included some images of the LeCroy Wavepro's spectrum view for you as well it to was a much better solution and I feel more accurate as well, I also pit the Wave pro against the Rigol RTA as well that was much closer indeed.

Now yesterday the Danny Bogoff show launched they new mini UXR for the pauper's brigade that was 6Ghz and had a built in RTA how we do not know yet (pretty sure TSP will be doing a review as we speak!) that was $106K (lol) but the point is what are you getting for your outlay???

I am not really bashing Tek, like I have said before we have three pieces of their equipment and its very good but their scopes and pricing are just (old English phrase here) "pissing in the wind" with the competition at the moment imho

Hi Sighound

But you are getting a spectrum analyzer on each channel and from what I have been told it's not chewing up anymore resources to have it since it has been incorporated into the hardware. You can also time correlate the spectrum with the time series which you can't do on an independent SA. Not only that you are not losing ADC bits by having multiple SA's switched on at the one time BTW how much did you end up paying for the Lecroy with all options that you wanted ? Yes and I know all of this gear can be really expensive when you start adding it all up with all of the performance and options that you want

cheers

[Sighound36]

Hi Sighound

But you are getting a spectrum analyzer on each channel and from what I have been told it's not chewing up anymore resources to have it since it has been incorporated into the hardware. You can also time correlate the spectrum with the time series which you can't do on an independent SA. Not only that you are not losing ADC bits by having multiple SA's switched on at the one time BTW how much did you end up paying for the Lecroy with all options that you wanted ? Yes and I know all of this gear can be really expensive when you start adding it all up with all of the performance and options that you want

cheers

Hi Snoopy

One plus with the Tek 6 series is the ability to 8 digital channels independently from each analogue channel with their lock and load probes. I can see this persuading a few people along with the stunning tru-view probes.

With regards to the LeCroy I had two independent spectral views running on two separate channels, also two spectral views on one channel no problem each looking at different aspects, no it didn't slow down either.

Depends on what you are using the scope for, we would never have any more than one spectral view in use at any one time, for pre compliance work we would use the SA tem cell/probes and LISN's etc.

Power supply work at a push.

The purchase cost was for 200Mpts / Audiobus / DFP2 Digital filter / Power analysis / Digital power management / JitKit / SDA III / Z1000 active probe / HVD3106A high voltage probe / CA10 current probe sensor £35K plus the vodka and tonic

[snoopy]

Hi Sighound

But you are getting a spectrum analyzer on each channel and from what I have been told it's not chewing up anymore resources to have it since it has been incorporated into the hardware. You can also time correlate the spectrum with the time series which you can't do on an independent SA. Not only that you are not losing ADC bits by having multiple SA's switched on at the one time BTW how much did you end up paying for the Lecroy with all options that you wanted ? Yes and I know all of this gear can be really expensive when you start adding it all up with all of the performance and options that you want

cheers

Hi Snoopy

One plus with the Tek 6 series is the ability to 8 digital channels independently from each analogue channel with their lock and load probes. I can see this persuading a few people along with the stunning tru-view probes.

With regards to the LeCroy I had two independent spectral views running on two separate channels, also two spectral views on one channel no problem each looking at different aspects, no it didn't slow down either.

Depends on what you are using the scope for, we would never have any more than one spectral view in use at any one time, for pre compliance work we would use the SA tem cell/probes and LISN's etc.

Power supply work at a push.

The purchase cost was for 200Mpts / Audiobus / DFP2 Digital filter / Power analysis / Digital power management / JitKit / SDA III / Z1000 active probe / HVD3106A high voltage probe / CA10 current probe sensor £35K plus the vodka and tonic

Sounds like you got a good deal Just curious what the equivalent R&S, Tek and Keysight offerings would have cost ?

cheers

[Sighound36]

Hi Snoopy

The Tek equivalent with a £3K current probe to the list, but minus the digital filter was a fair bit less on scope price but the cost of the software and probes put the the cost to £46K +vat

The Keysight S series, (though if the cost of the MXR is to be believed a 2.5Ghz unit will be around that £30K mark I feel) again the scope was less and the cost of the software was better very close between the LeCroy and Keysight but I found the LeCroy better, but the Keysight is still decent.

The R&S had a few options and they offered the most discount on the scopes themselves 35%

New RTO2024 Four channel oscilloscope, 2GHz bandwidth, this includes Windows 10 operating system, SDD drive, Jitter and Eye Analysis Options (K12 and K13), and Advanced Spectrum Analysis (K18, which may not be required as FFT Spectrum Analysis is included as standard, however K18 does however extend the capabilities by adding Waterfall displays, and advanced detection modes such as Max Hold etc..) RT-ZD30 3GHz Differential Probe. Total cost was £29,127 +vat

Ex-Demo RTO2044 Four channel oscilloscope, 4GHz bandwidth, however as this an ex-demo instrument it also comes with:
16 digital channel logic analysis and probesArbitrary Waveform Generator OCXO time base Trigger and decode bundle, which includes I2C, SPI, UART, RS232 plus may more… Ex-Demo RT-ZD40 4GHz Differential Probe Remaining options as above (item 1) 1 year warranty. Total cost £38K +vat

In fairness Snoopy I would suggest R&S offered the best pricing  of the big four

[Wuerstchenhund]

Surely you're exaggerating aren't you ??

No, I'm dead serious.

TDS700 brought out InstaVu with up to 400,000 waveform updates a second which could spot most glitches that other scopes were blind too. It was the forerunner to DPO which also was an industry first. You are right Tek built analog functionality into their digital scopes and now everyone is copying it !

Looks like someone drank the kool-aid

InstaVu was a crutch where high update rates were achieved in a special mode using data reduction, and which made it impossible to run measurements or any other analysis on the waveform.

It was only an "industry first" in a sense that no-one else implemented such a mode, very likely because of it's limitations. At around the same time, HP came out with its first MegaZoom equipped scope (HP 54645A/D, the 'D' also being the "industry first" MSO), which achieved excessive update rates in normal operation, with no limitations on measurements.

And when it comes to emulating analog functionality, there simply is nothing which better resembles an analog scope than MegaZoom (if that's what you want). It's as simple as that.

Oh, and as far as finding rare glitches is concerned, you don't need high update rates for that if your scope has a decent trigger suite and the user knows how to operate it. The high waveform modes only existed because of analog scope users (Tek didn't understand the potential that was in DSOs; HP did very well, but designed the 54600 Series particularly for analog scope users wanting to migrate to a DSO). Other scopes were equally capable to find even the rarest glitch without high update rates, simply through extensive trigger and analysis suites.

For the new Tek MSO's I can see one advantage of that architecture that other people are not talking about in that you don't lose ADC resolution when you have more than one channel displayed on the screen at the one time.

Which scope loses ADC resolution when more than one channel is active?

[Eric_S]

I still don't understand why they didn't just give the 4000C a smaller screen, and a new case and call it a day.

Much snappier user experience than the 3000 / 3, and you would still not cannibalize the 4 series ... that much.

The BOM would be higher, I guess, but on the other hand more people might actually want to buy one.

[Sighound36]

The BOM would be higher, I guess, but on the other hand more people might actually want to buy one.

A very astute observation Eric 

[james_s]

Most of Tek's DSOs have been pretty lackluster, often hampered by weird design decisions and a slow architecture, and that includes the TDS700 Series. There were some bright spots, though, such as the TDS200 (which introduced the lunchbox format, allthough they weren't the only ones, Iwatsu had a similar scope back then which was rebaded by LeCroy), or the TDS3000 which could be battery operated. Still, both scopes were painfully slow, and aside from the form factor or battery didn't offer much over scopes from other brands. And the fact that Tek carried both well into the 2000's is testament to the general lack of innovation when it comes to scopes.

I don't really grasp what you mean by it being slow. I have a TDS3054 and a TDS784C and the only time I've ever noticed any kind of slowness in either one is using deep memory on the TDS784. The TDS3000 feels very snappy to me, what do I need to do to see this "painfully slow" lag you refer to? I'm genuinely curious and don't know what you're talking about. While I do like the TekProbe interface I'm not opposed to other scope brands, but aside from the very shallow memory depth by modern standards and the exorbitant pricing on the still-available C version I really haven't found any other complaints about the TDS3000 series. It's the perfect form factor and the controls are laid out very logically, I can set it up with my eyes closed. 

[Someone]

I don't really grasp what you mean by it being slow. I have a TDS3054 and a TDS784C and the only time I've ever noticed any kind of slowness in either one is using deep memory on the TDS784. The TDS3000 feels very snappy to me, what do I need to do to see this "painfully slow" lag you refer to? I'm genuinely curious and don't know what you're talking about.

You're not the only one, I've always found the TDS3000 and TDS4000 Tek scopes to be perfectly usable. They're good balances with no extreme specs but no stinkers/drawbacks.

[snoopy]

Surely you're exaggerating aren't you ??

No, I'm dead serious.

TDS700 brought out InstaVu with up to 400,000 waveform updates a second which could spot most glitches that other scopes were blind too. It was the forerunner to DPO which also was an industry first. You are right Tek built analog functionality into their digital scopes and now everyone is copying it !

Looks like someone drank the kool-aid

InstaVu was a crutch where high update rates were achieved in a special mode using data reduction, and which made it impossible to run measurements or any other analysis on the waveform.

It was only an "industry first" in a sense that no-one else implemented such a mode, very likely because of it's limitations. At around the same time, HP came out with its first MegaZoom equipped scope (HP 54645A/D, the 'D' also being the "industry first" MSO), which achieved excessive update rates in normal operation, with no limitations on measurements.

And when it comes to emulating analog functionality, there simply is nothing which better resembles an analog scope than MegaZoom (if that's what you want). It's as simple as that.

Oh, and as far as finding rare glitches is concerned, you don't need high update rates for that if your scope has a decent trigger suite and the user knows how to operate it. The high waveform modes only existed because of analog scope users (Tek didn't understand the potential that was in DSOs; HP did very well, but designed the 54600 Series particularly for analog scope users wanting to migrate to a DSO). Other scopes were equally capable to find even the rarest glitch without high update rates, simply through extensive trigger and analysis suites.

For the new Tek MSO's I can see one advantage of that architecture that other people are not talking about in that you don't lose ADC resolution when you have more than one channel displayed on the screen at the one time.

Which scope loses ADC resolution when more than one channel is active?

That's not why you would use InstaVu. InstaVu was used to show up rarely occurring glitches that other scopes were blind to or may take hours sitting in front of the scope before  you would capture a single glitch ! And lets cut to the chase of the first megazoom scopes. What acquisition rates are you talking about here ? Please give us a figure ! Also later scopes such as TDS7000 allowed Fast Acquisition and measurements on the display at the same time.

Regarding ADC resolution if you scale the display to fit two or more channels stacked on the screen at the same time don't you automatically lose ADC resolution ? Apparently it is not an issue with the new Tek MSO scopes

cheers

[snoopy]

Most of Tek's DSOs have been pretty lackluster, often hampered by weird design decisions and a slow architecture, and that includes the TDS700 Series. There were some bright spots, though, such as the TDS200 (which introduced the lunchbox format, allthough they weren't the only ones, Iwatsu had a similar scope back then which was rebaded by LeCroy), or the TDS3000 which could be battery operated. Still, both scopes were painfully slow, and aside from the form factor or battery didn't offer much over scopes from other brands. And the fact that Tek carried both well into the 2000's is testament to the general lack of innovation when it comes to scopes.

I don't really grasp what you mean by it being slow. I have a TDS3054 and a TDS784C and the only time I've ever noticed any kind of slowness in either one is using deep memory on the TDS784. The TDS3000 feels very snappy to me, what do I need to do to see this "painfully slow" lag you refer to? I'm genuinely curious and don't know what you're talking about. While I do like the TekProbe interface I'm not opposed to other scope brands, but aside from the very shallow memory depth by modern standards and the exorbitant pricing on the still-available C version I really haven't found any other complaints about the TDS3000 series. It's the perfect form factor and the controls are laid out very logically, I can set it up with my eyes closed.

Likewise I have a Tek TDS3012 optioned up to a 3052 and I feel the same as you. It is quick and very flexible.  I can even use my Tek active probes with it no problems This is where Tek first commercialized its DPO technology in a lower cost form factor after the TDS500D and TDS700D when everyone else was playing catch up games for the next 20 years ! The TDS700 becomes very sluggish as you increase the memory depth unfortunately but I occasionally find its InstaVu, high-res mode and equivalent time sampling features very useful that are missed on other scopes even today ! Tek did equivalent time sampling better than anyone else

cheers

[Eric_S]

Regarding ADC resolution if you scale the display to fit two or more channels stacked on the screen at the same time don't you automatically lose ADC resolution ? Apparently it is not an issue with the new Tek MSO scopes

cheers

No.

You utilize the total quantization of the ADC less though.
Our LeCroy MDA can show a dedicated window per channel. And I would guess all mid range/ high end LeCroys ... and Keysight Infiniiums?

[Wuerstchenhund]

I don't really grasp what you mean by it being slow. I have a TDS3054 and a TDS784C and the only time I've ever noticed any kind of slowness in either one is using deep memory on the TDS784. The TDS3000 feels very snappy to me, what do I need to do to see this "painfully slow" lag you refer to? I'm genuinely curious and don't know what you're talking about.

It's not about 'lag' or general controls. There isn't any input lag when operating the scope. But unfortunately the user interface isn't everything.

For example, try mask testing on the TDS3000. Or FFT. The TDS3000 is also slow when it comes to waveform rates, as in normal mode it's trigger rate is some 450 wfms/sec. This raises to 3k wfms/s or so in Fast trigger mode but then the sample memory (with 10kpts not exactly large) is limited to a measly 500pts. It's not a big problem if you can make it with the available trigger suite (which is quite good if the advanced trigger option is installed) but that doesn't change the fact that the scope *is* slow, and when used in an 'analog scope' manner (like searching for glitches through trace persistence) then it will perform poorly.

The TDS784C isn't much different, it's older and even slower. In normal mode the waveform update rate is some 150 wfms/s with a 500pts memory and infinite persistence. InstaVu raises the update rate to some 400k wfms/s, however this is purely a viewing mode (i.e. no math, no FFT). This isn't much of a problem as rare events can only reliably be found through triggers (even at 400k wfms/s your scope is blind >90% of the time) but still, it's slow. This is also visible in when running FFTs, mask tests or some more complex maths, all which slows it down, even though FFTs are quite small (64k? can't remember) and measurements are limited to just four.

The other thing is that if any Tek scope is busy doing stuff then it locks up the user interface.

While I do like the TekProbe interface I'm not opposed to other scope brands, but aside from the very shallow memory depth by modern standards and the exorbitant pricing on the still-available C version I really haven't found any other complaints about the TDS3000 series. It's the perfect form factor and the controls are laid out very logically, I can set it up with my eyes closed.

Well, glad you like it, and if that's what suits you then that's perfectly fine of course, I'm not saying you should move to something else.

But this is about the question why Tek has lost the plot so much that today they represent the bottom-of-the-barrel when it comes to A brands. And for that it's important to look at the big picture, i.e. not the self-congratulatory stuff on Tek's marketing brochures you seem to be so fixated at, but at how Tek's offerings compared to the competition and what the market wanted. And it's obvious that Tektronix wasn't very successful there.

And this is for several reasons. For one, Tektronix never really understood the implications of going digital with scopes. Back then when the first early DSOs came along, Tektronix has long been very successful with its analog scopes, and more or less dominated the market. It's engineering base was very loyal, and more or less agreed of the "Tek way" of what makes a good oscilloscope. Digital scopes were at first considered a short-lived faff, then a niche product. Later, when Tek decided that it, too, needs to offer digital scopes, it basically tried to copy the behavior of analog scopes, which was seen as the most important thing. And this is reflected throughout Tek's DSO portfolio over the years.

The problem however is that Tektronix never realized the potential which comes with digitization, all it wanted was making analog scope like digital scopes. In reality, analog-like behavior was certainly a driver for a less expensive standard bench scope, above that however customer expected some new advanced analysis and measurement capabilities. HP and LeCroy realized that, while Tek kept its focus on visual gimmicks like InstaVu and at the cost of functionality, missing the mark by a long shot.

The other mistake is the belief that the brand name would have enough pull to guarantee sufficient sales. Well, it didn't, at least not long enough. Customers were quite aware that over the same time the competition came out with a series of new products Tektronix pretty much just offered a simple re-has of its existing product lines. And this isn't just true for the TDS3000, the whole TDS line was dragged along, with little improvements, way beyond it's best-by date.

Since DSOs became a thing, most of the innovation happened outside Tek. That support quality also declined dramatically from the old analog days just helped to accelerate the downward spiral.

A couple of years ago when the MSO6 came out I had great hopes that the new Tek, being freed of Danaher, is turning things around, but the scope was as lackluster as it's predecessors. Rinse and repeat for all the new models.

It's a shame really, not only because Tek once made the best scopes (when they were analog) and it's quite sad to see the constant decline, it's also bad for us customers because it means there is one less viable competitor out there which could help to keep pressure on price excesses. Unfortunately Tek seems to be very ambitious when it comes to pricing, and we're now at a point where mentioning "Tektronix" when talking to a sales droid of any other T&M manufacturer only gets you a sad smile.

[Wuerstchenhund]

InstaVu was a crutch where high update rates were achieved in a special mode using data reduction, and which made it impossible to run measurements or any other analysis on the waveform.

It was only an "industry first" in a sense that no-one else implemented such a mode, very likely because of it's limitations. At around the same time, HP came out with its first MegaZoom equipped scope (HP 54645A/D, the 'D' also being the "industry first" MSO), which achieved excessive update rates in normal operation, with no limitations on measurements.

And when it comes to emulating analog functionality, there simply is nothing which better resembles an analog scope than MegaZoom (if that's what you want). It's as simple as that.

That's not why you would use InstaVu. InstaVu was used to show up rarely occurring glitches that other scopes were blind to or may take hours sitting in front of the scope before  you would capture a single glitch !

So in which way is this different than any other high waveform rate technology like MegaZoom?

And while your trust in InstaVu is admirable, the reality is that even at 400k wfms/s your scope is still blind >90% of the time! Even scopes like the Keysight DSO-X3000T which achieve up to 1'030'000 waveforms/s are blind 89.70% of the time. Which means there is a 9 out of 10 chance your scope will miss an event on every acquisition.

Which means the *only* way to find rare events (or to make sure there are none!) is to use triggers.

And this is the reason why the only market segment that actually cares about update rates is the low-end/entry-level segment, mostly because this is what serves people coming from analog scopes and who prefer analog scope derived methodology. Above that, the update rate is pretty much irrelevant, and most high end scopes achieve only comparably low trigger rates. Which, again, doesn't matter, because no-one spends $3k on a scope to search for glitches by staring at a screen.

And lets cut to the chase of the first megazoom scopes. What acquisition rates are you talking about here ? Please give us a figure !

The original HP 54645A/D back then only had 200MSa/s, however it already offered 1Mpts memory. But this model did satisfy the needs of most engineers who came from a standard analog bench scope, which often had less than 100MHz BW anyways. The 54645 handled like an analog scope in normal mode, and could perform measurements and FFT on data captured.

Of course the TDS700 had higher sample rates and BWs, it was part of Tek's high end offerings and did cost a lot more than the HP 54645A/D. However, InstaVu worked with data decimation which notably reduced the amount of data that was used, which also means the waveform on the screen doesn't necessarily reflect the actual signal (bit like Peak Detect), something that isn't the case with MegaZoom.

Teh main point however is that for a scope in this class high update rates were pretty low on the list of expected functionality. It's a good example how Tek got the priorities wrong.

Also later scopes such as TDS7000 allowed Fast Acquisition and measurements on the display at the same time.

Yes, you can do measurements in Fast Acquisition mode, but you can't zoom, you can't use math, and the sample rate drops to 1.25GSa/s.

The TDS7000 is one more example how Tek missed the mark by ignoring analysis capabilities for a focus on update rates. And then dragged it along for way too many years.

Regarding ADC resolution if you scale the display to fit two or more channels stacked on the screen at the same time don't you automatically lose ADC resolution ? Apparently it is not an issue with the new Tek MSO scopes

It's not an issue with *any* DSO! ADC resolution is completely independet on what is shown on the screen. It doesn't matter if you have one, two, three, four or eight traces, the ADC resolution doesn't change. Why should it?

But it's a perfect example of Tek's misleading marketing.

[nctnico]

It's not an issue with *any* DSO! ADC resolution is completely independet on what is shown on the screen. It doesn't matter if you have one, two, three, four or eight traces, the ADC resolution doesn't change. Why should it?

It depends on how the traces are shown. If you take one grid and change the v/div so you can fit 4 traces you'll lose ADC resolution (and thus math precission). An alternative is to have multiple grids (split display) in which each trace can be shown at full height (IOW: using a lower v/div setting); in this case you won't lose ADC resolution. But this isn't a modern feature.

[Eric_S]

It depends on how the traces are shown. If you take one grid and change the v/div so you can fit 4 traces you'll lose ADC resolution (and thus math precission). An alternative is to have multiple grids (split display) in which each trace can be shown at full height (IOW: using a lower v/div setting); in this case you won't lose ADC resolution. But this isn't a modern feature.

When people talk about the resolution of the ADC, why would they mean something to the tune of "ADC input voltage range utilization"? The concept can be important, but that is not really what I think people are talking about when they say that an Arduino Uno's got a 10bit ADC.

[jjoonathan]

I'm pretty sure he's talking about vertical interleaving in the Infiniium S. According to: https://www.arbenelux.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/comparing-high-resolution-oscilloscope-design-approaches-wp-1.pdf

2 Channels: 10bit 8GHz 20GS/s
4 Channels: 8bit 2.5GHz 5GS/s

Which is odd, because as phrased it looks like one configuration is strictly worse, rather than each configuration trading channels / bandwidth / resolution through vertical and horizontal interleaving. My best guess is that "10bit 20GS/s" only applies to a reduced bandwidth/channel configuration, the 8bit 5GS/s mode is a Keysight typo, and the Lecroy analysis is trying to maximize FUD by stirring the two together.

I don't really care who is right, I just enjoy watching monkeys throw poo at each other 

[Someone]

It's not an issue with *any* DSO! ADC resolution is completely independet on what is shown on the screen. It doesn't matter if you have one, two, three, four or eight traces, the ADC resolution doesn't change. Why should it?

It depends on how the traces are shown. If you take one grid and change the v/div so you can fit 4 traces you'll lose ADC resolution (and thus math precission). An alternative is to have multiple grids (split display) in which each trace can be shown at full height (IOW: using a lower v/div setting); in this case you won't lose ADC resolution. But this isn't a modern feature.

Indeed, not a modern feature, but a useful one that is only just starting to become commonly available (possibly related to the increase in display resolutions making the problem more obvious).

[Someone]

I don't really grasp what you mean by it being slow. I have a TDS3054 and a TDS784C and the only time I've ever noticed any kind of slowness in either one is using deep memory on the TDS784. The TDS3000 feels very snappy to me, what do I need to do to see this "painfully slow" lag you refer to? I'm genuinely curious and don't know what you're talking about.

It's not about 'lag' or general controls. There isn't any input lag when operating the scope. But unfortunately the user interface isn't everything.

For example, try mask testing on the TDS3000. Or FFT. The TDS3000 is also slow when it comes to waveform rates, as in normal mode it's trigger rate is some 450 wfms/sec. This raises to 3k wfms/s or so in Fast trigger mode but then the sample memory (with 10kpts not exactly large) is limited to a measly 500pts. It's not a big problem if you can make it with the available trigger suite (which is quite good if the advanced trigger option is installed) but that doesn't change the fact that the scope *is* slow, and when used in an 'analog scope' manner (like searching for glitches through trace persistence) then it will perform poorly.

Slow waveform update rates make it bad, got it...

So in which way is this different than any other high waveform rate technology like MegaZoom?

And while your trust in InstaVu is admirable, the reality is that even at 400k wfms/s your scope is still blind >90% of the time! Even scopes like the Keysight DSO-X3000T which achieve up to 1'030'000 waveforms/s are blind 89.70% of the time. Which means there is a 9 out of 10 chance your scope will miss an event on every acquisition.

Which means the *only* way to find rare events (or to make sure there are none!) is to use triggers

Wait, waveform update rates are useless? (others will disagree on this point). Wash my fur but don't get me wet?

The reality is there is a balance, triggers can find some sorts of problems, and realtime viewing others, its all application specific and neither is better than the other for everything. You've been consistently coy about highlighting example applications or methods to enlighten us readers as to specific advantages. Ideally a scope would be capable in both areas, luckily those exist too.

The TDS700 becomes very sluggish as you increase the memory depth unfortunately but I occasionally find its InstaVu, high-res mode and equivalent time sampling features very useful that are missed on other scopes even today ! Tek did equivalent time sampling better than anyone else

Equivalent time sampling is a great way to capture high speed signals with a slow ADC, but all the big manufacturers have ADCs fast enough at prices that it makes little sense anymore (the cost of front end and sampling needed would be close enough to cost of a full realtime sampling system). Instavu is an oddball, possibly more comparable to modern eye-diagram 2d histogram modes which are often a separate acquisition mode with limitations etc, but similarly aimed at collecting statistical measures and outliers as quickly as possible.

[snoopy]

InstaVu was a crutch where high update rates were achieved in a special mode using data reduction, and which made it impossible to run measurements or any other analysis on the waveform.

It was only an "industry first" in a sense that no-one else implemented such a mode, very likely because of it's limitations. At around the same time, HP came out with its first MegaZoom equipped scope (HP 54645A/D, the 'D' also being the "industry first" MSO), which achieved excessive update rates in normal operation, with no limitations on measurements.

And when it comes to emulating analog functionality, there simply is nothing which better resembles an analog scope than MegaZoom (if that's what you want). It's as simple as that.

That's not why you would use InstaVu. InstaVu was used to show up rarely occurring glitches that other scopes were blind to or may take hours sitting in front of the scope before  you would capture a single glitch !

So in which way is this different than any other high waveform rate technology like MegaZoom?

And while your trust in InstaVu is admirable, the reality is that even at 400k wfms/s your scope is still blind >90% of the time! Even scopes like the Keysight DSO-X3000T which achieve up to 1'030'000 waveforms/s are blind 89.70% of the time. Which means there is a 9 out of 10 chance your scope will miss an event on every acquisition.

Which means the *only* way to find rare events (or to make sure there are none!) is to use triggers.

And this is the reason why the only market segment that actually cares about update rates is the low-end/entry-level segment, mostly because this is what serves people coming from analog scopes and who prefer analog scope derived methodology. Above that, the update rate is pretty much irrelevant, and most high end scopes achieve only comparably low trigger rates. Which, again, doesn't matter, because no-one spends $3k on a scope to search for glitches by staring at a screen.

Yes but you have to know what kind of glitch to trigger on otherwise you are poking around in the dark and that's if you even have the ability to trigger on it ! But you still didn't answer my question about the original megazoom acquisition rate ? Be interested to know Here is a comparison between an early Tek scope and apparently still current model Keysight scope ! Not bad for a mid 90's Tek scope

https://youtu.be/uUM7UDWifWw?t=1809

[snoopy]

It depends on how the traces are shown. If you take one grid and change the v/div so you can fit 4 traces you'll lose ADC resolution (and thus math precission). An alternative is to have multiple grids (split display) in which each trace can be shown at full height (IOW: using a lower v/div setting); in this case you won't lose ADC resolution. But this isn't a modern feature.

When people talk about the resolution of the ADC, why would they mean something to the tune of "ADC input voltage range utilization"? The concept can be important, but that is not really what I think people are talking about when they say that an Arduino Uno's got a 10bit ADC.

More correctly it's about dynamic range. If you have to cram 4 waveforms stacked on the screen at the one time you have to attenuate the signals to the ADC's to make them fit on the screen. So because of this you are using less dynamic range of the ADC and adding more quantization noise, thus effectively reducing the bit depth or effective number of bits ! Apparently the new Tek MSO's don't suffer from this scaling issue. Not sure about the other scope offerings. Maybe some others can enlighten us

cheers

[nctnico]

It depends on how the traces are shown. If you take one grid and change the v/div so you can fit 4 traces you'll lose ADC resolution (and thus math precission). An alternative is to have multiple grids (split display) in which each trace can be shown at full height (IOW: using a lower v/div setting); in this case you won't lose ADC resolution. But this isn't a modern feature.

When people talk about the resolution of the ADC, why would they mean something to the tune of "ADC input voltage range utilization"? The concept can be important, but that is not really what I think people are talking about when they say that an Arduino Uno's got a 10bit ADC.

More correctly it's about dynamic range. If you have to cram 4 waveforms stacked on the screen at the one time you have to attenuate the signals to the ADC's to make them fit on the screen. So because of this you are using less dynamic range of the ADC and adding more quantization noise, thus effectively reducing the bit depth or effective number of bits ! Apparently the new Tek MSO's don't suffer from this scaling issue. Not sure about the other scope offerings. Maybe some others can enlighten us

IMHO you are trying to spread FUD here. I already explained how it works by using seperate grids (which has been around for decades).

[2N3055]

InstaVu was a crutch where high update rates were achieved in a special mode using data reduction, and which made it impossible to run measurements or any other analysis on the waveform.

It was only an "industry first" in a sense that no-one else implemented such a mode, very likely because of it's limitations. At around the same time, HP came out with its first MegaZoom equipped scope (HP 54645A/D, the 'D' also being the "industry first" MSO), which achieved excessive update rates in normal operation, with no limitations on measurements.

And when it comes to emulating analog functionality, there simply is nothing which better resembles an analog scope than MegaZoom (if that's what you want). It's as simple as that.

That's not why you would use InstaVu. InstaVu was used to show up rarely occurring glitches that other scopes were blind to or may take hours sitting in front of the scope before  you would capture a single glitch !

So in which way is this different than any other high waveform rate technology like MegaZoom?

And while your trust in InstaVu is admirable, the reality is that even at 400k wfms/s your scope is still blind >90% of the time! Even scopes like the Keysight DSO-X3000T which achieve up to 1'030'000 waveforms/s are blind 89.70% of the time. Which means there is a 9 out of 10 chance your scope will miss an event on every acquisition.

Which means the *only* way to find rare events (or to make sure there are none!) is to use triggers.

And this is the reason why the only market segment that actually cares about update rates is the low-end/entry-level segment, mostly because this is what serves people coming from analog scopes and who prefer analog scope derived methodology. Above that, the update rate is pretty much irrelevant, and most high end scopes achieve only comparably low trigger rates. Which, again, doesn't matter, because no-one spends $3k on a scope to search for glitches by staring at a screen.

Yes but you have to know what kind of glitch to trigger on otherwise you are poking around in the dark and that's if you even have the ability to trigger on it ! But you still didn't answer my question about the original megazoom acquisition rate ? Be interested to know Here is a comparison between an early Tek scope and apparently still current model Keysight scope ! Not bad for a mid 90's Tek scope

https://youtu.be/uUM7UDWifWw?t=1809

What "apparently still current model Keysight scope !", Agilent MSO6104A ?
That thing is dead and gone, replaced by MSOX3000 series many moons ago...

And what "magical glitches" are everybody talking about? Runts, too short pulses, dropouts, rise time anomalies ? What?
All of those are well covered by triggers. 
This was discussed ad nauseam many times, like Someone nicely said.
Using on screen persistence to capture signal anomalies can be used but has limited usability.
Only information you get is that you caught something, but not when and in correlation to what.
It can be used only as a proof that there are some anomalies, and hopefully give enough information for operator to devise triggering scenario to reliably capture such anomalies every time. So you can count how many are there, what is distribution and try to correlate with system state and other signals to try to find a source.
Also, if you don't catch anything on screen, it is NOT a proof all is well, because you maybe didn't wait long enough...

I personally use screen persistence, but first go through a set of well known triggers (rise time, pulse width, runt), that is really quick thing to do,  and if those don't catch anything, i might let it run in infinite persistence mode for few hours just to be sure...
You can also set mask mode, and use that too. Nobody mentions this in this context. But it is probably best way to do it. It is a built in anomaly detector, that will detect any deviation of the signal.  And it will give you much more info than display persistence, because it will give you stats and confidence interval...


 

[tautech]

Combine persistence with coloured intensity grading and welcome to a whole other world of glitch detection !

[2N3055]

It depends on how the traces are shown. If you take one grid and change the v/div so you can fit 4 traces you'll lose ADC resolution (and thus math precission). An alternative is to have multiple grids (split display) in which each trace can be shown at full height (IOW: using a lower v/div setting); in this case you won't lose ADC resolution. But this isn't a modern feature.

When people talk about the resolution of the ADC, why would they mean something to the tune of "ADC input voltage range utilization"? The concept can be important, but that is not really what I think people are talking about when they say that an Arduino Uno's got a 10bit ADC.

More correctly it's about dynamic range. If you have to cram 4 waveforms stacked on the screen at the one time you have to attenuate the signals to the ADC's to make them fit on the screen. So because of this you are using less dynamic range of the ADC and adding more quantization noise, thus effectively reducing the bit depth or effective number of bits ! Apparently the new Tek MSO's don't suffer from this scaling issue. Not sure about the other scope offerings. Maybe some others can enlighten us

cheers

You do realize it's a digital scope? How it's displayed has nothing to do with how it's sampled (digitized). It is not 1 to 1 mapping, it never was.  Problem is that those scope manufacturers that insists scope should have "analog feel"  give you no other choice to resize things on the screen that by using analog input controls. New, modern digitals scopes can zoom in and out in display domain...

Attachments , signals in standard scope view(overlapped) and arranged side by side. All same input settings, same resolution and dynamic range, just different display.

[2N3055]

Combine persistence with coloured intensity grading and welcome to a whole other world of glitch detection !

True that!!
And a suggestion to Siglent... R&S has INVERTED colour mode, that emphasizes RARE event, making them highlighted. That is very useful.
Maybe something to think about as not too hard to implement (basicaly inverted pallete).. ??

[nctnico]

Combine persistence with coloured intensity grading and welcome to a whole other world of glitch detection !

True that!!
And a suggestion to Siglent... R&S has INVERTED colour mode, that emphasizes RARE event, making them highlighted. That is very useful.

Correct. The inverted color mode makes glitches stand out like sore thumb. I posted some screendumps together with my RTM3004 review.

[snoopy]

InstaVu was a crutch where high update rates were achieved in a special mode using data reduction, and which made it impossible to run measurements or any other analysis on the waveform.

It was only an "industry first" in a sense that no-one else implemented such a mode, very likely because of it's limitations. At around the same time, HP came out with its first MegaZoom equipped scope (HP 54645A/D, the 'D' also being the "industry first" MSO), which achieved excessive update rates in normal operation, with no limitations on measurements.

And when it comes to emulating analog functionality, there simply is nothing which better resembles an analog scope than MegaZoom (if that's what you want). It's as simple as that.

That's not why you would use InstaVu. InstaVu was used to show up rarely occurring glitches that other scopes were blind to or may take hours sitting in front of the scope before  you would capture a single glitch !

So in which way is this different than any other high waveform rate technology like MegaZoom?

And while your trust in InstaVu is admirable, the reality is that even at 400k wfms/s your scope is still blind >90% of the time! Even scopes like the Keysight DSO-X3000T which achieve up to 1'030'000 waveforms/s are blind 89.70% of the time. Which means there is a 9 out of 10 chance your scope will miss an event on every acquisition.

Which means the *only* way to find rare events (or to make sure there are none!) is to use triggers.

And this is the reason why the only market segment that actually cares about update rates is the low-end/entry-level segment, mostly because this is what serves people coming from analog scopes and who prefer analog scope derived methodology. Above that, the update rate is pretty much irrelevant, and most high end scopes achieve only comparably low trigger rates. Which, again, doesn't matter, because no-one spends $3k on a scope to search for glitches by staring at a screen.

Yes but you have to know what kind of glitch to trigger on otherwise you are poking around in the dark and that's if you even have the ability to trigger on it ! But you still didn't answer my question about the original megazoom acquisition rate ? Be interested to know Here is a comparison between an early Tek scope and apparently still current model Keysight scope ! Not bad for a mid 90's Tek scope

https://youtu.be/uUM7UDWifWw?t=1809

What "apparently still current model Keysight scope !", Agilent MSO6104A ?
That thing is dead and gone, replaced by MSOX3000 series many moons ago...

And what "magical glitches" are everybody talking about? Runts, too short pulses, dropouts, rise time anomalies ? What?
All of those are well covered by triggers. 
This was discussed ad nauseam many times, like Someone nicely said.
Using on screen persistence to capture signal anomalies can be used but has limited usability.
Only information you get is that you caught something, but not when and in correlation to what.
It can be used only as a proof that there are some anomalies, and hopefully give enough information for operator to devise triggering scenario to reliably capture such anomalies every time. So you can count how many are there, what is distribution and try to correlate with system state and other signals to try to find a source.
Also, if you don't catch anything on screen, it is NOT a proof all is well, because you maybe didn't wait long enough...

I personally use screen persistence, but first go through a set of well known triggers (rise time, pulse width, runt), that is really quick thing to do,  and if those don't catch anything, i might let it run in infinite persistence mode for few hours just to be sure...
You can also set mask mode, and use that too. Nobody mentions this in this context. But it is probably best way to do it. It is a built in anomaly detector, that will detect any deviation of the signal.  And it will give you much more info than display persistence, because it will give you stats and confidence interval...

What exactly is your point ?? Tek had this functionality in the mid 90's that no other scope vendor had at the time. I have one of these scopes and have used it for that purpose many times. I don't worry about hunting through all of the triggers and trigger parameters in order to find a glitch when I can just push a single button and sit back and watch the side show on the screen

cheers

[2N3055]

InstaVu was a crutch where high update rates were achieved in a special mode using data reduction, and which made it impossible to run measurements or any other analysis on the waveform.

It was only an "industry first" in a sense that no-one else implemented such a mode, very likely because of it's limitations. At around the same time, HP came out with its first MegaZoom equipped scope (HP 54645A/D, the 'D' also being the "industry first" MSO), which achieved excessive update rates in normal operation, with no limitations on measurements.

And when it comes to emulating analog functionality, there simply is nothing which better resembles an analog scope than MegaZoom (if that's what you want). It's as simple as that.

That's not why you would use InstaVu. InstaVu was used to show up rarely occurring glitches that other scopes were blind to or may take hours sitting in front of the scope before  you would capture a single glitch !

So in which way is this different than any other high waveform rate technology like MegaZoom?

And while your trust in InstaVu is admirable, the reality is that even at 400k wfms/s your scope is still blind >90% of the time! Even scopes like the Keysight DSO-X3000T which achieve up to 1'030'000 waveforms/s are blind 89.70% of the time. Which means there is a 9 out of 10 chance your scope will miss an event on every acquisition.

Which means the *only* way to find rare events (or to make sure there are none!) is to use triggers.

And this is the reason why the only market segment that actually cares about update rates is the low-end/entry-level segment, mostly because this is what serves people coming from analog scopes and who prefer analog scope derived methodology. Above that, the update rate is pretty much irrelevant, and most high end scopes achieve only comparably low trigger rates. Which, again, doesn't matter, because no-one spends $3k on a scope to search for glitches by staring at a screen.

Yes but you have to know what kind of glitch to trigger on otherwise you are poking around in the dark and that's if you even have the ability to trigger on it ! But you still didn't answer my question about the original megazoom acquisition rate ? Be interested to know Here is a comparison between an early Tek scope and apparently still current model Keysight scope ! Not bad for a mid 90's Tek scope

https://youtu.be/uUM7UDWifWw?t=1809

What "apparently still current model Keysight scope !", Agilent MSO6104A ?
That thing is dead and gone, replaced by MSOX3000 series many moons ago...

And what "magical glitches" are everybody talking about? Runts, too short pulses, dropouts, rise time anomalies ? What?
All of those are well covered by triggers. 
This was discussed ad nauseam many times, like Someone nicely said.
Using on screen persistence to capture signal anomalies can be used but has limited usability.
Only information you get is that you caught something, but not when and in correlation to what.
It can be used only as a proof that there are some anomalies, and hopefully give enough information for operator to devise triggering scenario to reliably capture such anomalies every time. So you can count how many are there, what is distribution and try to correlate with system state and other signals to try to find a source.
Also, if you don't catch anything on screen, it is NOT a proof all is well, because you maybe didn't wait long enough...

I personally use screen persistence, but first go through a set of well known triggers (rise time, pulse width, runt), that is really quick thing to do,  and if those don't catch anything, i might let it run in infinite persistence mode for few hours just to be sure...
You can also set mask mode, and use that too. Nobody mentions this in this context. But it is probably best way to do it. It is a built in anomaly detector, that will detect any deviation of the signal.  And it will give you much more info than display persistence, because it will give you stats and confidence interval...

What exactly is your point ?? Tek had this functionality in the mid 90's that no other scope vendor had at the time. I have one of these scopes and have used it for that purpose many times. I don't worry about hunting through all of the triggers and trigger parameters in order to find a glitch when I can just push a single button and sit back and watch the side show on the screen

cheers

I apologize, for, something...

[Wuerstchenhund]

I don't really grasp what you mean by it being slow. I have a TDS3054 and a TDS784C and the only time I've ever noticed any kind of slowness in either one is using deep memory on the TDS784. The TDS3000 feels very snappy to me, what do I need to do to see this "painfully slow" lag you refer to? I'm genuinely curious and don't know what you're talking about.

It's not about 'lag' or general controls. There isn't any input lag when operating the scope. But unfortunately the user interface isn't everything.

For example, try mask testing on the TDS3000. Or FFT. The TDS3000 is also slow when it comes to waveform rates, as in normal mode it's trigger rate is some 450 wfms/sec. This raises to 3k wfms/s or so in Fast trigger mode but then the sample memory (with 10kpts not exactly large) is limited to a measly 500pts. It's not a big problem if you can make it with the available trigger suite (which is quite good if the advanced trigger option is installed) but that doesn't change the fact that the scope *is* slow, and when used in an 'analog scope' manner (like searching for glitches through trace persistence) then it will perform poorly.

Slow waveform update rates make it bad, got it...

You clearly didn't 'get' it. I didn't say that the low update rate in normal operation was a problem, I actually said it isn't (and, just for you, I highlighted above where I did that so you can easily find it ).

The point I was making is that the scope might feel OK if you twidle the knobs, it's still a very slow scope. And while the waveform rate isn't really a problem, the slow architecture is for tasks like mask testing, math or FFT.

It should also be remembered that the TDS3000, while looking a lot like the entry-level scopes of today, wasn't a an entry level or even particularly cheap scope (the 500MHz version without any options ran some $18k+, even the 100MHz 2ch base model was over $7k!). Back then in 1999 it's competitors were not common bench scopes like the Agilent 54622A (which was around $4k back then if I remember right) but other expensive scopes like the Agilent Infiniium 54800 Series or the LeCroy WaveRunner LT (and for the 500MHz models even the LC Series). Just to put this into some context.

So in which way is this different than any other high waveform rate technology like MegaZoom?

And while your trust in InstaVu is admirable, the reality is that even at 400k wfms/s your scope is still blind >90% of the time! Even scopes like the Keysight DSO-X3000T which achieve up to 1'030'000 waveforms/s are blind 89.70% of the time. Which means there is a 9 out of 10 chance your scope will miss an event on every acquisition.

Which means the *only* way to find rare events (or to make sure there are none!) is to use triggers

Wait, waveform update rates are useless? (others will disagree on this point). Wash my fur but don't get me wet?

I always said that update rates are pretty meaningless, yes.

The reality is there is a balance, triggers can find some sorts of problems, and realtime viewing others,

Nope. The reality is that glitch finding via persistence mode is a crutch from a time where scopes were so primitive that it literally was the only tool available. Sophisticated triggers as we have them today didn't exist, storage (where it was even available) was utterly poor, and measurement capabilities nonexistent.

Persistence mode does has its place but only where it is ensured that the events of interest occur within the actual acquisition phase, which means that some basic understanding of the event must have been established first. For example eye diagrams.

its all application specific and neither is better than the other for everything.

Simple math says otherwise. The only way you can be sure that you captured every event within the time period of observation is by using triggers.

Just to be sure, we're talking about "gllitch hunting", i.e. finding rare events. Persistence mode of course has some use for other tasks, i.e. mask tests.

You've been consistently coy about highlighting example applications or methods to enlighten us readers as to specific advantages.

What is there to highlight? With a good scope I can trigger of *any* kind of event, no matter what. Runt? Missing pulses? Too many pulses? Wrong data bits in a serial transmission? Slew rates outside spec? Malformed pulses? Anything else? Doesn't matter, with a good scope I can trigger on it. How, depends on the scope (that's where knowing your instrument comes in), but even a TDS3000, if it has the advanced trigger option installed, can go a long way finding stuff with triggers.

So I'm really curious as what kind of sporadic events you believe can only be found with persistence modes.

Ideally a scope would be capable in both areas, luckily those exist too.

Sure, for a standard entry-level or low-midrange bench scope (simple scope), but mostly because these scopes are often limited in what triggers they offer (although that is becoming less and less an issue, as even many cheap scopes offer a surprisingly versatile range of triggers) and because these are scopes which often fall in the hand of hobbyists and other people who want to treat it like an analog scope of back then (which will continue as long as outdated methodology is still passed on as 'best practise').

For anything above the lower mid-range the focus has always been on triggers and analysis capabilities, and high end scopes all came with often paltry trigger rates. Which, again, isn't a problem because no-one pays $20+ for a scope to start glitch hunting by staring at a persistence screen. Relying on persistence mode to find rare events is also completely useless for qualification, e.g. demonstrating the absence of a specific type of event, or even that the number of events is within a certain range.

Over the years waveform rates of high-end scopes have improved, but that is mostly a side effect of the need to process ever more data (generated by very fast ADCs often operating at increased resolution, and from the various analysis and processing tools) as quickly as possible. Technical progress already has the same effect on entry-level scopes, where newer models achieve respectable update rates without relying on special modes or proprietary ASICs, and this will only continue. At the same time, trigger capabilities of entry-level scopes are constantly improving, which means persistence mode glitch hunting is becoming as obsolete in this class as it has been for more expensive scopes.

[Wuerstchenhund]

It's not an issue with *any* DSO! ADC resolution is completely independet on what is shown on the screen. It doesn't matter if you have one, two, three, four or eight traces, the ADC resolution doesn't change. Why should it?

It depends on how the traces are shown. If you take one grid and change the v/div so you can fit 4 traces you'll lose ADC resolution (and thus math precission). An alternative is to have multiple grids (split display) in which each trace can be shown at full height (IOW: using a lower v/div setting); in this case you won't lose ADC resolution. But this isn't a modern feature.

You are right of course, I was assuming that the vertical div setting isn't changed when adding traces. of course if you change the v/div setting then you change the effective dynamic range which is used for the signal.

You'd only do this to visually separate different traces on a simpler scope which only has a single graticule. as better scopes usually offer two or multiple graticules where traces don't have to share the same graticule but where every trace has its own, and these are automatically scaled by the scope so everything fits on screen.

[0culus]

I got an email from Tektronix this afternoon offering discounts on the 3 and 4 series. Apparently they are offering 16 digital channels fore free and 75% off the Software bundle for the 3 series.

https://www.tek.com/promotions/Spring-Summer-2020-Sale

[Someone]

You've been consistently coy about highlighting example applications or methods to enlighten us readers as to specific advantages.

What is there to highlight? With a good scope I can trigger of *any* kind of event, no matter what. Runt? Missing pulses? Too many pulses? Wrong data bits in a serial transmission? Slew rates outside spec? Malformed pulses? Anything else? Doesn't matter, with a good scope I can trigger on it. How, depends on the scope (that's where knowing your instrument comes in), but even a TDS3000, if it has the advanced trigger option installed, can go a long way finding stuff with triggers.

So I'm really curious as what kind of sporadic events you believe can only be found with persistence modes.

Still being coy, some things never change. If you're trying to find an unknown problem searching through n-number of triggers that are an abstraction of what might be causing the problem, for instance when exactly does a runt qualify if its only a partial height on an edge?. There are automated tools to step through multiple triggers and check them at realtime sampling, but crucially they don't run in parallel, so your argument of blind time applies equally (often worse) to them as soon as you have a non-trivial number of different trigger conditions to check. If its offline analysis, again, the speed at which that occurs is important to compare with your same blind time example. Deep memory is great for one off events, but trying to extract maximum information from realtime streams can be done more effectively with waveform accumulation in many real world applications (note the lack of any absolute statement such as all).

And you assume that triggers can describe the problem, which may be true for some digital signal analysis but there are a world of other signals out there such as power and analog, which are hard to describe their faults/problems. Your statements are not absolute and universal as you try to present them, but then endlessly try to argue that they are irrefutable truths. We're not cherry pricking out of context points, you are the one active highlight how universal your "truths" are:

Which means the *only* way to find rare events (or to make sure there are none!) is to use triggers.

If you narrowly frame where/why such approaches are superior you might have a point, but you never do. And as soon as the alternatives are presented factually and in context you have to discount them as not applicable to your imagined and non-specific application.

its all application specific and neither is better than the other for everything.

Simple math says otherwise. The only way you can be sure that you captured every event within the time period of observation is by using triggers.

Just to be sure, we're talking about "gllitch hunting", i.e. finding rare events. Persistence mode of course has some use for other tasks, i.e. mask tests.

Mask testing and building eye diagrams are adjacent and often tightly coupled to the realtime waveform update rate, they could be considered almost synonymous given what they present. But you try and separate them to drive your narrative.

"simple math" is what you don't use to compare the alternatives, you're quick to point out that many waveforms per second /= 100% visibility. But then fail to show that alternatives are superior. Checking through 10 trigger configurations in realtime (not counting the configuration overhead) would be at least 90% blind, the same figure as is often settled on for high waveform capture rates. The question then is can the problem be surely found with only 10 triggers? or, does a 2D histogram of the signal (itself triggered to already narrow what your are looking at) contain more information?

Also noting that dead time can approach 0% for slower signals (the rate may be slower but the blind time is lower), but you always drive the discussion exclusively to highspeed digital with short acquisition windows where the (effectively fixed) re-arm period makes the blind time look as bad as possible. More subtle and unspoken framing that you don't explain against the applications. This is the sort of sly and misleading sales tactics that salespeople resort to, slowly moving someone away from what they actually wanted by convincing them something else is shiny and impressively higher performance, except none of those points actually apply to the customers application, or are compared only in corner cases to make everything seem rosy to their advantage.

If you only need to look for a single trigger, sure you can claim the 100% but that misses any other characteristics that are unknown prior, and doesn't build a statistical measure. In reality both methods can be comparable with one or the other more effective depending on the specific application.

[james_s]

Hm I've never encountered a use for mask testing, I suppose it must be the sort of thing that is very useful in certain situations. Haven't found FFT on scopes to be all that useful either, it's kind of a cool toy but since getting my hands on a real spectrum analyzer I haven't used the FFT on any of my scopes since.

Triggering is extremely useful and I set up various trigger conditions all the time. Waveform update rate is nice when I'm just poking around and don't really know what I expect to find, or when I'm using the scope to get a quick visual of a power rail or something. If I'm looking for intermittent glitches I'll set up a trigger.

It really depends on what you're trying to do. I used analog scopes for years and feel very comfortable driving one so perhaps that's why the older Tek DSOs appeal to me. I'm not a fanboy though, there are lots of nice scopes out there and given infinite budget and space I'd have at least one of every brand I could get my hands on.

[snoopy]

I don't really grasp what you mean by it being slow. I have a TDS3054 and a TDS784C and the only time I've ever noticed any kind of slowness in either one is using deep memory on the TDS784. The TDS3000 feels very snappy to me, what do I need to do to see this "painfully slow" lag you refer to? I'm genuinely curious and don't know what you're talking about.

It's not about 'lag' or general controls. There isn't any input lag when operating the scope. But unfortunately the user interface isn't everything.

For example, try mask testing on the TDS3000. Or FFT. The TDS3000 is also slow when it comes to waveform rates, as in normal mode it's trigger rate is some 450 wfms/sec. This raises to 3k wfms/s or so in Fast trigger mode but then the sample memory (with 10kpts not exactly large) is limited to a measly 500pts. It's not a big problem if you can make it with the available trigger suite (which is quite good if the advanced trigger option is installed) but that doesn't change the fact that the scope *is* slow, and when used in an 'analog scope' manner (like searching for glitches through trace persistence) then it will perform poorly.

Slow waveform update rates make it bad, got it...

You clearly didn't 'get' it. I didn't say that the low update rate in normal operation was a problem, I actually said it isn't (and, just for you, I highlighted above where I did that so you can easily find it ).

The point I was making is that the scope might feel OK if you twidle the knobs, it's still a very slow scope. And while the waveform rate isn't really a problem, the slow architecture is for tasks like mask testing, math or FFT.

It should also be remembered that the TDS3000, while looking a lot like the entry-level scopes of today, wasn't a an entry level or even particularly cheap scope (the 500MHz version without any options ran some $18k+, even the 100MHz 2ch base model was over $7k!). Back then in 1999 it's competitors were not common bench scopes like the Agilent 54622A (which was around $4k back then if I remember right) but other expensive scopes like the Agilent Infiniium 54800 Series or the LeCroy WaveRunner LT (and for the 500MHz models even the LC Series). Just to put this into some context.

Waveform update rate on that Agilent ?? I think Dave did a review on a similar scope once and he could only clock in about 400 wfs/s !! Just saying

[Wuerstchenhund]

Hm I've never encountered a use for mask testing, I suppose it must be the sort of thing that is very useful in certain situations. Haven't found FFT on scopes to be all that useful either, it's kind of a cool toy but since getting my hands on a real spectrum analyzer I haven't used the FFT on any of my scopes since.

Well, FFT is often seen as a cheap spectrum analyzer replacement but on a good scope you can apply it to other data (i.e. maths functions) as well, and quite often can give helpful information as to the properties of interference sources.

Mask testing is useful, for example for testing spec compliance of certain signals, but as persistence mode it's also limited by the update rate. It works best for signals where all events happen within the acquisition time.

Triggering is extremely useful and I set up various trigger conditions all the time. Waveform update rate is nice when I'm just poking around and don't really know what I expect to find, or when I'm using the scope to get a quick visual of a power rail or something. If I'm looking for intermittent glitches I'll set up a trigger.

Sounds like a good strategy.

It really depends on what you're trying to do. I used analog scopes for years and feel very comfortable driving one so perhaps that's why the older Tek DSOs appeal to me. I'm not a fanboy though, there are lots of nice scopes out there and given infinite budget and space I'd have at least one of every brand I could get my hands on.

At the end of the day it's down to whatever suits you best anyways.

But yes, if I had the budget and especially the space then I'd try to get one exemplar of every scope series, too. Thinking about it, maybe not having the money and space for that isn't such a bad thing after all 

[snoopy]

I have to agree having had both the 5 & 6 series scopes I can confirm they are under performers, clunky,very average UI way over priced for both software and probes. Ridiculous boot up time of around 6 minutes 12 bit dubious performance unless around 1Ghz on the 6 series probe prices like raw graphene costs!

Also our units crashed quite consistently.

Not having a downer on Tek here, have purchased two pieces of quality Tek test equipment very recently its just the scopes are way off the mark in many areas plus the silly pricing.

Look at LeCroy or Keysight equivalent offers much better all round imho

Some observations below

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rd-oscilloscope-acquisition-now-settled/msg3000760/#msg3000760

A 1 GHz scope that can't measure 1GHz and 12 bit ADC that can't really do 12 bits !! Are you sure that was a Tek scope ?

[0xdeadbeef]

Hm, the typical marketing nonsense, selecting two products from different price classes with totally different sample rates and assuming that anybody will fall for this.

[nctnico]

Hm, the typical marketing nonsense, selecting two products from different price classes with totally different sample rates and assuming that anybody will fall for this.

Yes. According to every oscilloscope manufacturer the competition has an ENOB of only 4 bit compared to their 16 bit. 
These competitor comparisons are beyond useless!

[0xdeadbeef]

Besides, I understand that even the magnificent S series falls back to 8bit modes in some typical scenarios. So they didn't only select a much more expensive scope with much higher bandwidth but obviously also selected a specific use case where their scope would shine and the other one would show its limitations. I mean, I understand that from a marketing point of view. It's still annoying to assume that all potential users are idiots.

[jjoonathan]

Hm, the typical marketing nonsense, selecting two products from different price classes with totally different sample rates and assuming that anybody will fall for this.

Yes. According to every oscilloscope manufacturer the competition has an ENOB of only 4 bit compared to their 16 bit. 
These competitor comparisons are beyond useless!

Eh, they keep each other honest, and the constant shenanigans and call-outs have entertainment value. 

[2N3055]

Hm, the typical marketing nonsense, selecting two products from different price classes with totally different sample rates and assuming that anybody will fall for this.

Yes. According to every oscilloscope manufacturer the competition has an ENOB of only 4 bit compared to their 16 bit. 
These competitor comparisons are beyond useless!

I disagree, they are quite useful, as constant reminder that we shouldn't trust any of them blindly !! 

On a serious note, when in need, you have to make detailed case study of your test case, and submit that to support/application support teams at vendors to see what they say.
When you ask them specific questions, none of them will lie, and will quite honestly admit what they can offer you for your use case...

[snoopy]

Hm, the typical marketing nonsense, selecting two products from different price classes with totally different sample rates and assuming that anybody will fall for this.

Yes. According to every oscilloscope manufacturer the competition has an ENOB of only 4 bit compared to their 16 bit. 
These competitor comparisons are beyond useless!

Nope ! It's a 1GHz bandwidth scope that can't display 1GHz and that has an ENOB of 8 bits or less even though it claims 12 bits !

If it was a Tek scope a few of them on here would be all over it bagging the crap out of it !

[snoopy]

Hm, the typical marketing nonsense, selecting two products from different price classes with totally different sample rates and assuming that anybody will fall for this.

Yes. According to every oscilloscope manufacturer the competition has an ENOB of only 4 bit compared to their 16 bit. 
These competitor comparisons are beyond useless!

I disagree, they are quite useful, as constant reminder that we shouldn't trust any of them blindly !! 

On a serious note, when in need, you have to make detailed case study of your test case, and submit that to support/application support teams at vendors to see what they say.
When you ask them specific questions, none of them will lie, and will quite honestly admit what they can offer you for your use case...

I agree, the more of these types of comparisons the better. If you are going to payout top dollars for test equipment you need to have the facts in front of you because the marketing blurb or sales guy will never tell you what's wrong with a particular piece of gear

[0culus]

Hm, the typical marketing nonsense, selecting two products from different price classes with totally different sample rates and assuming that anybody will fall for this.

Yes. According to every oscilloscope manufacturer the competition has an ENOB of only 4 bit compared to their 16 bit. 
These competitor comparisons are beyond useless!

I disagree, they are quite useful, as constant reminder that we shouldn't trust any of them blindly !! 

On a serious note, when in need, you have to make detailed case study of your test case, and submit that to support/application support teams at vendors to see what they say.
When you ask them specific questions, none of them will lie, and will quite honestly admit what they can offer you for your use case...

I agree, the more of these types of comparisons the better. If you are going to payout top dollars for test equipment you need to have the facts in front of you because the marketing blurb or sales guy will never tell you what's wrong with a particular piece of gear

Honestly, if you're buying high end gear, you should be getting the vendors to give you demo units so you can try before you buy. If I'm buying for work, and I'm spending $30,000 on an o-scope, I better damn well be getting a demo so I can exercise it see how it works in my application.

[Sighound36]

Honestly, if you're buying high end gear, you should be getting the vendors to give you demo units so you can try before you buy. If I'm buying for work, and I'm spending $30,000 on an o-scope, I better damn well be getting a demo so I can exercise it see how it works in my application.

Could not agree more I spent around 5 weeks with four different vendors scopes in the price range I was looking at (company wise) up to £50K All were very accommodating and helpful. Even the Tek rep was 100%

 

[Sighound36]

Nope ! It's a 1GHz bandwidth scope that can't display 1GHz and that has an ENOB of 8 bits or less even though it claims 12 bits !

If it was a Tek scope a few of them on here would be all over it bagging the crap out of it !

Snoopy

I cannot comment on the video you posted as I have never had access to 4000 LeCroy, however plenty of time with the Keysight S series and I have have mentioned it is rather good, but it has its issues as well (the all do, though some more than others!)

The best ENOB I have actually used is 8.7 bits on a 350mhz MDO6000A Lecroy (1Ghz version is 8.4 bits) fab scope just not enough bandwidth or serial data analysis for ourselves for most it's more than enough!

The Equivalent S series (which you really would not compare to, however its been in your video)  has an ENOB of 7.8 bits @ 1 Ghz at 500Mhz it is 8.1 bits very respectable.

With the scope we have Wavepro254 the ENOB is 7.8 ENOB @ 2.5Ghz, the S series is 7.4 bits @ 2.54Ghz at 8Ghz it is 6.4 bits, the LeCroy is 7 bits @ 8Ghz. This is achieved without having high resolution active as was the Keysight S series.
The LeCroy also gives 12 bits all the time, plus the same rate does drop in the same fashion as the Tek 6 series

Both of the above using 50 Ohm open ports as well.

The Tek 6 series to achieve its published ENOB has to have high resolution active tables below.

The 6 Series @ 2.5Ghz using high rez model 2mv div vertical time base measuring a 10 Mhz signal is 6.2 bits at 50mv the ENOB is 7.8 bits (high resolution active again).



I have attached some Tek 6 screen shoots I did struggle to get close to the claim claimed noise floor on more than a few occasions, however all I have left of those are below.

Though while I was testing out a new clock design I did notice the 'claimed' jitter measurements now I would love to actually put these on the product marketing brochure however I am not sure that an oscilloscope has the ability to really deliver Zeptoscond or Yactosecond accuracy  except maybe the UXR?

Please do inspect the screen shots absolutely zero image manipulation has occurred.

In fairness to the Tek the power analysis app was very good it got respectably close to my Tek power analyser, have attached some images for that app as well.

Sorry but the Tek 6 series does not have enough 'redeeming features' to warrant the purchase imho


Sorry last images clearly shows the Tek displaying Yactosecond (ys) time meas

[Sighound36]

Yes. According to every oscilloscope manufacturer the competition has an ENOB of only 4 bit compared to their 16 bit. 
These competitor comparisons are beyond useless!

Nope ! It's a 1GHz bandwidth scope that can't display 1GHz and that has an ENOB of 8 bits or less even though it claims 12 bits !

If it was a Tek scope a few of them on here would be all over it bagging the crap out of it !
[/quote]

Hi Snoopy

I do agree with you so to keep things in perspective an image of the LeCroy Wavepro 254 meeting its 2.5Ghz bandwidth @ -3db with the 12 bits and no high resolution filter added.

[snoopy]

Nope ! It's a 1GHz bandwidth scope that can't display 1GHz and that has an ENOB of 8 bits or less even though it claims 12 bits !

If it was a Tek scope a few of them on here would be all over it bagging the crap out of it !

Hi Snoopy

I do agree with you so to keep things in perspective an image of the LeCroy Wavepro 254 meeting its 2.5Ghz bandwidth @ -3db with the 12 bits and no high resolution filter added.

Because I'm not one to continuously bash a particular test equipment vendor because of preconceived biases, in fairness to Lecroy, later on they did bring out the HDO4000A scope with higher sampling rate (from 2.5Gs/s to 10GG/s probably by combining all 4 ADC's) although this particular 4000 series scope does have equivalent or repetitive time sampling up to 125 Gs/s so it should have been able to display a 1GHz sinewave if it was switched on that is, or did the Keysight dude conveniently switch it off ?

Lecroy HDO4000 datasheet

http://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/pdf/hdo4000_oscilloscope_datasheet.pdf

Lecroy HDO4000A datasheet

http://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/pdf/hdo4000a-oscilloscopes-datasheet.pdf

cheers

[0xdeadbeef]

I hate to say this, but the "enhanced sampling rate" in the HDO4000A is a marketing ruse as well:
http://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/enhanced-sample-rate-whitepaper.pdf
I understand the HDO4000A still uses 2.5GSa/s (5GSa/s interleaved) but interpolates samples inbetween to "enhance" the sample rate.

About the Keysight video: as far as I could see, there is only one channel active, so I guess interleaved 5GSa/s were used.
Still, when comparing a 5GSa/s scope with a 20GSa/s scope you will easily find cases where the one with the four times lower sampling rate shows its limits.

[snoopy]

I hate to say this, but the "enhanced sampling rate" in the HDO4000A is a marketing ruse as well:
http://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/whitepapers/enhanced-sample-rate-whitepaper.pdf
I understand the HDO4000A still uses 2.5GSa/s (5GSa/s interleaved) but interpolates samples inbetween to "enhance" the sample rate.

About the Keysight video: as far as I could see, there is only one channel active, so I guess interleaved 5GSa/s were used.
Still, when comparing a 5GSa/s scope with a 20GSa/s scope you will easily find cases where the one with the four times lower sampling rate shows its limits.

Regarding the HDO4000, Lecroy should have really band-limited this scope to 500MHz and not 1Ghz ie 1/5th the max ADC sample rate

cheers

[0xdeadbeef]

5GSa/s interleaved is not totally uncommon for 1GHz scopes but yeah, personally I'd rather have 10GSa/s or so. Again, Keysight could have chosen a scope in the same price/performance league or selected test scenarios where the the LeCroy would have looked much better (even better than the Keysight in certain cases). Besides, the ENOB comparison looks like BS. I guess they compared measured system values of the LeCroy with theoretical ADC (not system) values fo the Keysight.

[egonotto]

Hello,

snoopy wrote: "Regarding the HDO4000, Lecroy should have really band-limited this scope to 500MHz and not 1Ghz ie 1/5th the max ADC sample rate"

As I remember right, a staff of Pico Technology mean that the better rise time is the reason.

And that convinced me.

Best regards
egonotto

[PixieDust]

I'm far from an expert but looking at the oscilloscope landscape right now based on what people are saying on these forums:
Tektronix seems to be a brand to be steered clear of for many reasons. However, I think the 3 series form factor is pretty much the perfect scope (for me). I REALLY like the big screen and its layout. I think form factor wise, it's what a modern scope should be like!
Keysight seems to be the brand to go to on the basis of what is inside the scope and the software, however the small screen is a big turn off for me. When Keysight released their current line up, my first reaction was, "how do you fit all the stuff on that screen?". Maybe it's a non issue. But then there's rumours of non business customers being left in the dark in terms of servicing/support.
R&S has some quirks and similarly small screen to the Keysight.
Lecroy is just a rebranded Siglent or some other scope? Sure people are saying Siglents are good hardware wise and Lecroy fills in the gaps with its good software. Even still, I don't know if I can forgive it for being a rebranded scope.

So based on all this, personally, I give the large screen a big weight and Tektronix comes out on top. But the fact that its just a freshened up MDO 3000 (released in 2014) and as some forum members have suggested that it's not even an MDO is just... how? what? why? The price just doesn't make sense to me.

I guess there's no perfect scope.

Keysight are the next in line to release the next gen stuff and maybe it'll have a more modern form factor. I'd be interested in that.

But again, I know very little about this stuff, so take my bumblings with a big pinch of salt.

[Martin72]

Lecroy is just a rebranded Siglent

Depends on the money you're willing to spend for... 

[PixieDust]

My market of interest would be 3 series equivalent not the $1M stuff .

[Martin72]

We've payed appx 13k€ with "huge" discount for the very good HDO6034A in 2019, maybe it could be even cheaper today.
And this was not a rebranded siglent.... 

[2N3055]

I'm far from an expert but looking at the oscilloscope landscape right now based on what people are saying on these forums:
Tektronix seems to be a brand to be steered clear of for many reasons. However, I think the 3 series form factor is pretty much the perfect scope (for me). I REALLY like the big screen and its layout. I think form factor wise, it's what a modern scope should be like!
Keysight seems to be the brand to go to on the basis of what is inside the scope and the software, however the small screen is a big turn off for me. When Keysight released their current line up, my first reaction was, "how do you fit all the stuff on that screen?". Maybe it's a non issue. But then there's rumours of non business customers being left in the dark in terms of servicing/support.
R&S has some quirks and similarly small screen to the Keysight.
Lecroy is just a rebranded Siglent or some other scope? Sure people are saying Siglents are good hardware wise and Lecroy fills in the gaps with its good software. Even still, I don't know if I can forgive it for being a rebranded scope.

So based on all this, personally, I give the large screen a big weight and Tektronix comes out on top. But the fact that its just a freshened up MDO 3000 (released in 2014) and as some forum members have suggested that it's not even an MDO is just... how? what? why? The price just doesn't make sense to me.

I guess there's no perfect scope.

Keysight are the next in line to release the next gen stuff and maybe it'll have a more modern form factor. I'd be interested in that.

But again, I know very little about this stuff, so take my bumblings with a big pinch of salt.

Yes there are no perfect things in general...

First, what BW are we talking about?

Second, I'm sorry to break the news to you, but lower end devices (3000 series class or down) are nowadays being better served by non big names.
Fact that LeCroy is charging much more for a Siglent made device is not an insult to LeCroy but a testament that you should buy that class of devices from Siglent. Rigol used to be OEM for Keysight for lower segment scopes.
Those two companies make decent products for affordable money in that device class.

Nowadays you only need to buy from the Tek, Keysight, LeCroy and R&S only when you transition into mid and higher end devices. A brands have wealth of knowledge and experience in making T&M solutions. But they are very meticulous to make sure NONE of that even trickles to their lower end devices. They need you to pay for it.
So you might end up with, for instance, a Keysight scope that is (deliberately) made to be crippled so you have to buy their higher class scope. While still being much more expensive than better scopes from the likes of Rigol and Siglent.
For the price Tek asks for 3000 series , you can get 2 GHz scopes from Rigol and Siglent..

Keysight recently released new EXR and MXR series, their latest iteration of 1000 series that actually makes old 2000 series look bad, and new MSOX3000G, that is same old 3000T with black case and few software options for free.
And that is all innovation you'll get. Why? Because they really don't care about 3000 range and down. They will happily sell you the old one for as long as there are buyers, but they really want you to buy MXR/EXR. Those replaced both 4000 and 6000 and upper models... They are modular, support up to 8 ch, and all use same ADC acquistion architecture in many permutations. And those are serious upgrade to models they replaced, on market they care for.

Same logic prevails in LeCroy, Tek and R&S.
Meaning, there is lots of innovation form them, but only at market segment you (and me) cannot afford.
On market segment we are interested in, innovation comes from newcomers fighting to get recognized. And those usually put much more effort and work harder to prove themselves. My personal choice is that I decided to give them a chance.

Because with big brands I started to feel like a poor man in a expensive restaurant: what was supposed to be a special treat to me for special occasion ended up me feeling stupid that I gave my whole monthly salary for a meal that wasn't that special (because i couldn't afford any of really fancy stuff)  and they couldn't wait for me to go away, because I wasn't spending nearly as much as those rich people do and I was taking up a table....

[tv84]

Because with big brands I started to feel like a poor man in a expensive restaurant: what was supposed to be a special treat to me for special occasion ended up me feeling stupid that I gave my whole monthly salary for a meal that wasn't that special (because i couldn't afford any of really fancy stuff)  and they couldn't wait for me to go away, because I wasn't spending nearly as much as those rich people do and I was taking up a table....

Been there... 

[Domitronic]

Tek 3 Series was a good deal while on special offer. Last year and beginning of this year you could get the 350MHz model with all options for less than 5k€ plus tax. For the regular pricing i would only buy it because of current probes and differential probes we already have. If there is no need to connect TekVPI probes there are other options from other manufacturers.

Keep in mind that while it is a nice form factor the software ruins the user experience pretty much. It is really slow and laggy. And annoying bugs were introduced with the latest firmware update.

But personal taste matters as well. We have Tek 3/4/5, Keysight 3000G and some older Teks. Many people always grab one of the Teks, but some always choose the Keysight for daily work. So if possible try before buy.

On paper the Wavesurfer 4000HD looks pretty good as well in my opinion and still has decent pricing compared to Tek and Keysight. But it was ruled out before even trying because we already have 2 brands and didn't want to introduce a third one. So i have no experience with it.

And as a hobbyist i would not spend so much money for a new Tek/Keysight/LeCroy scope. 2N3055 described it pretty good in his post.

[Martin72]

As in the later 2019 the two new lecroy scopes at work arrived and I got to play with them for the first time, my actual scope at home at this time are so...so...It feels like to have a comparison between the LCD-Handheld games in the 80s vs a nintendo handheld of today.
Waverunner and HDO are simply another league, compared to my former scope(rigol 5000) not even on the same planet.
But both will cost at least a 5-digit € sum...
And support is on another level too.
Before I´ve bought a wavesurfer in 2018.
When ever I got a question about the waverunner or the HDO, I surely get an answer inbetween 48hrs via mail or phonecall.
Wavesurfer....It could last weeks before you got response.
BTW: Don´t buy a WS3000 scope without "Z" at the end of the name.
Never, regardless of how attractive the offer is.
Simply trust me..

[PixieDust]

We've payed appx 13k€ with "huge" discount for the very good HDO6034A in 2019, maybe it could be even cheaper today.
And this was not a rebranded siglent.... 

That's out of my price range. Nice big screen though .

First, what BW are we talking about?

I think the 350Mhz would suit me just fine. But I'm also looking for ARINC 429.

Second, I'm sorry to break the news to you, but lower end devices (3000 series class or down) are nowadays being better served by non big names.
Fact that LeCroy is charging much more for a Siglent made device is not an insult to LeCroy but a testament that you should buy that class of devices from Siglent. Rigol used to be OEM for Keysight for lower segment scopes.
Those two companies make decent products for affordable money in that device class.

Nowadays you only need to buy from the Tek, Keysight, LeCroy and R&S only when you transition into mid and higher end devices. A brands have wealth of knowledge and experience in making T&M solutions. But they are very meticulous to make sure NONE of that even trickles to their lower end devices. They need you to pay for it.
So you might end up with, for instance, a Keysight scope that is (deliberately) made to be crippled so you have to buy their higher class scope. While still being much more expensive than better scopes from the likes of Rigol and Siglent.
For the price Tek asks for 3000 series , you can get 2 GHz scopes from Rigol and Siglent..

Keysight recently released new EXR and MXR series, their latest iteration of 1000 series that actually makes old 2000 series look bad, and new MSOX3000G, that is same old 3000T with black case and few software options for free.
And that is all innovation you'll get. Why? Because they really don't care about 3000 range and down. They will happily sell you the old one for as long as there are buyers, but they really want you to buy MXR/EXR. Those replaced both 4000 and 6000 and upper models... They are modular, support up to 8 ch, and all use same ADC acquistion architecture in many permutations. And those are serious upgrade to models they replaced, on market they care for.

Same logic prevails in LeCroy, Tek and R&S.
Meaning, there is lots of innovation form them, but only at market segment you (and me) cannot afford.
On market segment we are interested in, innovation comes from newcomers fighting to get recognized. And those usually put much more effort and work harder to prove themselves. My personal choice is that I decided to give them a chance.

Because with big brands I started to feel like a poor man in a expensive restaurant: what was supposed to be a special treat to me for special occasion ended up me feeling stupid that I gave my whole monthly salary for a meal that wasn't that special (because i couldn't afford any of really fancy stuff)  and they couldn't wait for me to go away, because I wasn't spending nearly as much as those rich people do and I was taking up a table....

Noted.

Tek 3 Series was a good deal while on special offer. Last year and beginning of this year you could get the 350MHz model with all options for less than 5k€ plus tax. For the regular pricing i would only buy it because of current probes and differential probes we already have. If there is no need to connect TekVPI probes there are other options from other manufacturers.

Keep in mind that while it is a nice form factor the software ruins the user experience pretty much. It is really slow and laggy. And annoying bugs were introduced with the latest firmware update.

But personal taste matters as well. We have Tek 3/4/5, Keysight 3000G and some older Teks. Many people always grab one of the Teks, but some always choose the Keysight for daily work. So if possible try before buy.

On paper the Wavesurfer 4000HD looks pretty good as well in my opinion and still has decent pricing compared to Tek and Keysight. But it was ruled out before even trying because we already have 2 brands and didn't want to introduce a third one. So i have no experience with it.

And as a hobbyist i would not spend so much money for a new Tek/Keysight/LeCroy scope. 2N3055 described it pretty good in his post.

$5k€ sounds not too shabby.

Would definitely be nice to try one in the flesh. Pictures and marketing material make the product seem a certain way that reality doesn't reflect. Even the 5 series that Shahriar reviewed didn't look that good in terms of responsiveness.

[EEVblog]

And as a hobbyist i would not spend so much money for a new Tek/Keysight/LeCroy scope. 2N3055 described it pretty good in his post.

You wouldn't buy any of those brands as a hobbyist, unless you had cash to burn, had a special requirement, or could get a great bundle/used deal.

[EEVblog]

I'm far from an expert but looking at the oscilloscope landscape right now based on what people are saying on these forums:
Tektronix seems to be a brand to be steered clear of for many reasons. However, I think the 3 series form factor is pretty much the perfect scope (for me). I REALLY like the big screen and its layout. I think form factor wise, it's what a modern scope should be like!
Keysight seems to be the brand to go to on the basis of what is inside the scope and the software, however the small screen is a big turn off for me. When Keysight released their current line up, my first reaction was, "how do you fit all the stuff on that screen?". Maybe it's a non issue. But then there's rumours of non business customers being left in the dark in terms of servicing/support.
R&S has some quirks and similarly small screen to the Keysight.

The new R&S MXO4 scope I have is pretty amazing, albeit it did lock up on my first use with early firmware!
I haven't done a detailed comparison, but I believe it's base price ($8k) is not far of a similar Keysight 3000, and in that case there is absolutely no contest, the R&S blows it out of the park.

[TheSteve]

And as a hobbyist i would not spend so much money for a new Tek/Keysight/LeCroy scope. 2N3055 described it pretty good in his post.

You wouldn't buy any of those brands as a hobbyist, unless you had cash to burn, had a special requirement, or could get a great bundle/used deal.

Or got a good deal and couldn't resist attempting a bw hack 

[EEVblog]

And as a hobbyist i would not spend so much money for a new Tek/Keysight/LeCroy scope. 2N3055 described it pretty good in his post.

You wouldn't buy any of those brands as a hobbyist, unless you had cash to burn, had a special requirement, or could get a great bundle/used deal.

Or got a good deal and couldn't resist attempting a bw hack 

Or that!
It's trivial for example to hack a Tek MDO3000 to get everything.

[tv84]

Or that!
It's trivial for example to hack a Tek MDO3000 to get everything.

As easy as a MDO3. 

[EEVblog]

Or that!
It's trivial for example to hack a Tek MDO3000 to get everything.

As easy as a MDO3. 

Has that been done already? 

[tv84]

Has that been done already? 

 

[PixieDust]

Thanks to Dave, I spent perhaps an hour looking at R&S scopes today. Perhaps my dislike of their physical appearance needs to take a step back. Price wise they are not too shabby. Performance wise they look like a nice bit of kit. I’ll look into them some more now.

In Tektronix’s defence, they provide all the manuals including service manuals right on their site. Admittedly it’s not that useful since you need some serious equipment to performance test/calibrate the instruments which is not something I want to get into, but still, something to be mindful of.