EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: master.nasr on August 03, 2022, 02:26:11 pm
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Hi everyone, I'm going to buy a 4 channel oscilloscope for about $400. In my country Rigol DS1054Z (50MHz), Hantek DSO4104B (100MHz) and OWON SDS1104 (100MHz) are available and are at the same price.
The product overall quality is more important than bandwidth and other technical specifications for me (because I want to start some power electronic circuits design and I need something durable). which brand (Rigol, Hantek, OWON) do you think is more reliable?
In other words, imagine you're buying one of these for yourself, which one do you buy?
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DS1054Z has much better hardware than other scopes you mentioned but it also has much better software. Not that Rigol scopes have no bugs but at least they get fixed over time and DS1054Z is a quite mature model. There are better models than DS1054Z at similar price, but not sure if they are available in Iran and how much they cost in comparison. EDIT: want to add that I don't know about particular Hantek scope but Hantek tends to abandon what they release. Once I bought their logic analyzer which recently released. It had so broken firmware and PC software it was basically unusable. Guess what, they never released an update from initial version.
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Rigol all the way. They're a better 'scope and totally solid build with full metal chassis.
(note: the DS1054Z can easily be unlocked to 100Mhz)
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There are better models than DS1054Z at similar price
Thanks, would you please write these models names, so I can search for them?
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Check SDS1104X-E, although it will be more expensive unless there is some promotion. Can be unlocked(hacked) to 200MHz. Siglent SDS1202X-E costs about the same as Rigol but has 2 channels.
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Is that even a contest if they are all for the same price for you?
Owon or Hantek are worth considering only if they are significantly cheaper (by 50% or more) than the Rigol - and you can put up with the bugs, poor/nonexistent (i.e. good luck if the thing breaks or a fatal bug is discovered) support.
I have the older (non Z) version of the Rigol and it is still a very good scope for the money, despite being quite a few years old now. Even more so if you upgrade the bandwidth to full 100MHz (it is more like 150). The only things that suck are the relatively sluggish UI and the almost unusable FFT, even though the later got some improvements in the later firmware versions.