Rigol announces "serious" scope: DS70000

[mikeselectricstuff]

"Knob switch with photoelectric" - great, I'll take two.
Not quite on the hilariously terrible level of the Neoden video, but pretty lacking in useful content

[mawyatt]

They still have 8-bit input converters, no more...

The video says 16 bits. 

But 8 bits is enough for anybody when you have a high sample rate. Just average a few samples together and you can have 10, 12, any number of bits you like.

Sure, this is why Keysight invested the time & $ in full custom designed and produced (StingRay) 10 bit converters in the new EXR (16GSPS @ 9 ENOB), MXR (16GSPS @ 9 ENOB), S (20GSPS @ 8.1ENOB) & UXR (256GSPS @ 6.8ENOB) DSOs. You obviously know more about DSOs than Keysight, since they could have just settled for 8 bit, maybe with an ENOB of 5~6 bits, and saved quite a few Millions $!!

Here's some images of the Keysight StingRay ADC from ~ 6 years ago, the design started probably over 10 years ago!!

Let's hope this new Rigol DSO has a much better designed and performing 8 bit ADC & front end than what Rigol currently has demonstrated, this would put some "pressure" on some of the other DSO folks in the same market space

Best,

[TurboTom]

"Knob switch with photoelectric" - great, I'll take two.
Not quite on the hilariously terrible level of the Neoden video, but pretty lacking in useful content

Yeah, that's quite funny... I also like their BNC sockets without the signal contact in the center. Probably there wasn't enough time left to design a correct model of the connector. These all-rendered videos aren't worth a lot anyway, at least not to understand at what phase of the design they are.

At least, Rigol's new slogan "Possibilities and More" is much better than the last one "Innovation or Nothing"  Anyway, I liked their first one "Beyond Measure" best. Whatsoever, all this isn't worth anything if the product isn't competitive. With this new intrument, they may have a real opportunity to enter the real "Professional Sector" if they do it right.

[Fungus]

At least we know what their firmware developers have been working on.

It certainly isn't the MSO5000 (although it should be... that's their cash cow right now)

[ResistorRob]

Lot's comments along the lines of "don't know who would buy this", but there are mechanics out there who buy Harbor Freight tools instead of Snap-On, and while that might not be the greatest analogy because the individual buys their own tools and not the company. The point remains there is a place for equipment that delivers most the features and quality at a fraction of the cost.

A lot of small companies are pretty cheap when it comes to buying major purchases. I know this first hand because I've worked at a few like this! I'm sure this is a high-margin item so they don't need one on the bench of every engineer in the world to make some good money from it. And I did write "world" and not "America" because they do sell oscilloscopes in multiple countries and will probably move a fair amount of these.

This reminds me of Tesla (for the record I hate electric cars. Give me a new Corvette or Bronco!). They started out and pretty much everyone thought they will be a fade and disappear in a few years. Now their stock is worth more than all the big 3 U.S. auto manufacturers combined. True, Rigol doesn't have a 70 year history and I doubt Tek's experience making boat anchors in the 80's is really helping them develop modern test equipment. Oh, but they have the reputation right? Do they really? For a while they were selling very outdated oscilloscopes that were slow and had tiny memory. So they pretty much started over from scratch with their current 3/4/5 series scopes. My whole point of this rambling is to say don't underestimate them. They could give the A-brands a real run for their money within 10 years if they played their cards right. Obviously we all know the shortcomings, but if they address those things they could become a company similar to Hyundai. If you don't know they started selling junk cars for dirt cheap, and now offer similar quality to the A-brands and even have longer warranties while offering a lot for the money.

More competition is a good thing for everyone. It drives innovation and helps runaway pricing than if just a few companies have a monopoly. They have come a long way on aesthetics since the 1054z (or whatever the model is. sorry I'm not a Rigol fanboy, lol). This thing looks bad ass, modern, and polished. Way out of my hobbyist budget, but if I was purchasing an oscilloscope for a company it would definitely be on my short list of considerations.

[_Wim_]

The point remains there is a place for equipment that delivers most the features and quality at a fraction of the cost.

I think this is still Rigols (and other brands not considered an A-brand yet) main challenge: people expect their products to be a fraction of the cost, while the realty is to deliver similar quality & service, prices probably need to be closer together.

I see this often in my line of work were we buy machines instead of test equipment (unfortunately  ), when a new supplier tries to enter the market he has 2 choices:
- go low in price => then we say it too cheap to be trusted
- go almost equal in price => then we say difference is not large enough to take the "gamble"

And yet we complain that our machines from the A-brands are way too expensive...

[SilverSolder]

The point remains there is a place for equipment that delivers most the features and quality at a fraction of the cost.

I think this is still Rigols (and other brands not considered an A-brand yet) main challenge: people expect their products to be a fraction of the cost, while the realty is to deliver similar quality & service, prices probably need to be closer together.

I see this often in my line of work were we buy machines instead of test equipment (unfortunately  ), when a new supplier tries to enter the market he has 2 choices:
- go low in price => then we say it too cheap to be trusted
- go almost equal in price => then we say difference is not large enough to take the "gamble"

And yet we complain that our machines from the A-brands are way too expensive...

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!  -  Somebody bought the first fledgling Toyotas when they started coming to America...   and look what happened!

Basically, the only path a brand has to financial success is to become an A brand.  The bargains are found while the brand is not there yet (if it ever makes it)! 

[S. Petrukhin]

I wonder how many of these machine can be sold... 

[Martin72]

Call me superficial, but having an e-paper label that refreshes when you software-upgrade the device is super cool...

The model and main parameters of the product are displayed on the electronic sign, and the content can be kept for 20 years even in the shutdown state. After the instrument is upgraded, the performance parameters can be automatically refreshed to ensure that the instrument asset information matches.

THIS is really cool...

[oliv3r]

Ah, I totally missed this, I just bumped into the model and found this thread. Thanks google

We talked about 'rigol former engineer resume' and 'next gen' ... i guess this is it then. Somehow I'm happy it will be FAR out of my budget Means I can focus on the MS5000 :p

Technically, I think this is the 'Mountain Eagle' (I think it was) platform, so ZnyqMP, 64bits multi-core as the driver of the OS. The app is probably new gui, but same 'insides' (they won't rewrite the flamingo appEntry from scratch, reuse what you can, slap a new UI on top).

I've seen the Rigol software development skills, and they are ... desirable. So sadly, I expect that the software quality will be poor, but hopefully they spend more on testing and fixing bug on this platform as this is more high-end/expensive. means probably we won't see any fixes in the MSO5k-8k line ...

[tv84]

MSO8000 is "Martial Eagle".

[Martin72]

means probably we won't see any fixes in the MSO5k-8k line ...

As I sold my 5000, the 70000 wasn´t in mind but that were my thoughts too.
The MSO5000 came up as the cheapest way to buy the new rigol platform - And they won´t spend much more effort to polish it.
This came in my mind as a year after buying has passed and no significant firmware updates were in sight.
But I won´t leave rigol and hopes are lying on the DSO/MSO7000.
Same there and the answer of my question ( will the 7000 have the same (noisy) frontend as the 5000 ? Yes..) let me vending my 5000 and changing to siglent.
And what to say, in the first year appearing, there are two significant updates avaible which are not only fixing some bugs, also nice features on board.
This in combination with the much less frontend and much better UI let me never regret to have done the change.
Sad rigol, so sad.

[TurboTom]

means probably we won't see any fixes in the MSO5k-8k line ...

As I sold my 5000, the 70000 wasn´t in mind but that were my thoughts too.
The MSO5000 came up as the cheapest way to buy the new rigol platform - And they won´t spend much more effort to polish it.
This came in my mind as a year after buying has passed and no significant firmware updates were in sight.
But I won´t leave rigol and hopes are lying on the DSO/MSO7000.
Same there and the answer of my question ( will the 7000 have the same (noisy) frontend as the 5000 ? Yes..) let me vending my 5000 and changing to siglent.
And what to say, in the first year appearing, there are two significant updates avaible which are not only fixing some bugs, also nice features on board.
This in combination with the much less frontend and much better UI let me never regret to have done the change.
Sad rigol, so sad.

Siglent's entry and intermediate level scopes appear to be quite decent, but ask those fellows that put their bet (read: money) on the SDM30*5X series bench multimeters or their top-of-the-range SDG6000X AWGs. They may sing you a different song...

[Martin72]

Then they should buy from another brand, everyone´s free to do that. 

[Noy]

 Rigol may have a noisier frontend but who cares if you need BW for digital / analog "high speed" stuff? For these things i'm more confident with my rigol.. Siglent is close to the edge with their bw / sample rate.
And if you need to measure really small signals use an external low noise amplifier...

But yes a bit more polish for example for the Bode plot feature would be nice. This is a thing for what i am envious on siglent. But then i think about my dedicated knobs for each channel and i am happy again ;-)

[Martin72]

Ja, die dedizierten Knöpfe hauen es raus..

Sorry for the german...

Me, I got no problem with non dedicated knobs as I was always used to use them on lecroy scopes for more than 17yrs.

Siglent is close to the edge with their bw / sample rate.

But not above.
In the past, there were 500Mhz or more scopes with less samplerate as 2GSa/s avaible and still usable, so no sweat.

[tautech]

Ja, die dedizierten Knöpfe hauen es raus..

Sorry for the german...

Me, I got no problem with non dedicated knobs as I was always used to use them on lecroy scopes for more than 17yrs.

Siglent is close to the edge with their bw / sample rate.

But not above.
In the past, there were 500Mhz or more scopes with less samplerate as 2GSa/s avaible and still usable, so no sweat.

Yes but we need remember SDS2504X Plus is only specified as offering 500 MHz capability for 2 channels not 4 and they need be assigned to each ADC to maintain 2 GSa/s so not to challenge Nyquist.
RTFM. 

[Martin72]

"only"...Very good. 

I don´t need rtfm, why, read the post again.

[tautech]

"only"...Very good. 

I don´t need rtfm, why, read the post again.

I know you know but Noy has missed this. 

SDS5000X with dual 5 GSa/s ADC's at 1 GHz still meets Nyquist with 4 channels active.

[Vestom]

SDS5000X with dual 5 GSa/s ADC's at 1 GHz still meets Nyquist with 4 channels active.

I seriously doubt that. Although I don't know much about the SDS5000X, the SDS2k with 500MHz BW does not filter the signal much up to 1GHz and shows plenty of aliasing if pushed. But IMHO that is OK, if you know what you are doing and the scope has more BW limiting options for the frontend (like the SDS2k). But "meeting Nyquist", not so much...

E.g. the SDS2k with 500MHz bandwidth can comfortably measure a 800MHz signal
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent-sds2000x-plus-coming/msg3220886/?topicseen#msg3220886

[DaJMasta]

They still have 8-bit input converters, no more...

That's my concern as well.  However, if this helps develop their analysis software and higher bandwidth technology, it could be the beginning of a good direction for them into higher end equipment.  The chassis seems fairly deep in comparison to other modern offerings, and the converter doesn't sound as fancy as some of its competitors, but at the right price point and with comprehensive analysis options, it could certainly be a good bang for buck contender.  I don't mind the look either, a bit cleaner and more professional in my eyes than the gamer PC signal generators of a couple years back, but still has a bit of the scifi look.

A good direction, now let's see how its software handles itself and what it costs.

[Fungus]

Rigol may have a noisier frontend but who cares if you need BW for digital / analog "high speed" stuff? For these things i'm more confident with my rigol.. Siglent is close to the edge with their bw / sample rate.

Yep, and if you want less noise  you can turn on some averaging.

8GHz sample rate in a 350MHz 'scope give you plenty of headroom for enabling 4x averaging (or whatever).

[oliv3r]

MSO8000 is "Martial Eagle".

I haven't seen teardowns of the MSO8000 yet, but the code is the same. E.g. there's lots of 'if DS7000 -> X; if MSO8000 Y; and that is only for U-Boot/linux. appEntry is even entirely the same I think. Now if you remember looking at the resume of the former rigol employee, He listed 'Project Martial Eagle' as a ZynqMP 64bit platform. It is super likely the DS70000 will be that, and he called i the martial eagle project?

But all we need is a photo of the MSO8000 PCB, the silkscreen will reveal it

[oliv3r]

means probably we won't see any fixes in the MSO5k-8k line ...

As I sold my 5000, the 70000 wasn´t in mind but that were my thoughts too.
The MSO5000 came up as the cheapest way to buy the new rigol platform - And they won´t spend much more effort to polish it.
This came in my mind as a year after buying has passed and no significant firmware updates were in sight.
But I won´t leave rigol and hopes are lying on the DSO/MSO7000.

While the performance of the 7k is higher, the 5k has as its advantage it was done later (check the PCB silkscreen to see the dates) so some bugs where fixed in that platform.

In terms of software, I'm starting (but don't have the time yet) to invetarize the various MSO appEntries and try to 'cross-run' them. E.g. run the software from the MSO8000 on the MSO5000 shouldn't be a problem. The hardware platforms are super similar. The FPGA code IS different (the big kintex 7) but appEntry is a single compile for all platforms I think...

Same there and the answer of my question ( will the 7000 have the same (noisy) frontend as the 5000 ? Yes..) let me vending my 5000 and changing to siglent.
And what to say, in the first year appearing, there are two significant updates avaible which are not only fixing some bugs, also nice features on board.
This in combination with the much less frontend and much better UI let me never regret to have done the change.
Sad rigol, so sad.

My guess is, that their engineering resources all went into the new DS70000 series ... I still prefer the rigol platform for some reason

But it's common isn't it? Release and forget...

[Martin72]

Batronix got it now:

https://www.batronix.com/shop/oscilloscopes/Rigol-DS70304.html

Ultravision III Platform, not the same as on 7000/5000 and 8000(?).
Multi-Window display, full hd 15"
3Ghz/5Ghz
20GSa/s, 1.000.000 wfm/s, up to 2Gpt memory, up to 16bit vertical resolution...
A second 3.5" touchdisplay..Photoelectric incremental encoders....
Price is "of course" way beyond all other rigol scopes - But will be "cheap" in relation to other scopes in this class.
Looks nice!