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Scope recomendations in $15-20K range?
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tooki:
Having recently compared (as in test-drive loaner units for a month) scopes at the $10K mark at work, mostly lower-bandwidth versions of what you’re considering: the decision should first and foremost be driven by your needs.

For example, LeCroy has unbeatable analysis tools, and I quite like their UI. But their waveform update rate is far lower than the others, so they suck for identifying glitches in real-time. In contrast, Keysight and R&S excel at this. Tek is a bit weird: they are not bad at real-time glitch capture — but only in a particular acquisition mode that disables most other features. In a sense the Tek models don’t have any obvious strength (other than offering super-low-capacitance passive probes), but they grew on me, in that I just liked using them. I will add that the physical build quality of the Tek models was the very best in the bunch.

I came across a quote somewhere (in a presentation, I think) from a LeCroy manager who said exactly what I concluded: there are two groups of scopes: “analytical” scopes focused on event capture and analysis, and “display” scopes focused on real-time use with high waveform rates. LeCroy is the leader in analytic scopes, Keysight arguably the leader in display scopes, with R&S trying damned hard to dethrone them.

(This isn’t surprising, given that LeCroy began not as a scope company, but as a maker of digitizers for nuclear research, where one captures a ton of data of an event and then analyzes it later.)

In the end, I ended up going for the MXO4, because I already had a high-end LeCroy I can use for analytic purposes, so I chose to go for a “display” scope, and the MXO4 excels at this, with both full-time 12-bit (which is used for the digital trigger, so the trigger sensitivity is superb) and above all an unparalleled waveform update rate and a great spectrum analyzer. It was a really tough call between the MXO4 and the Keysight 4000G, whose user interface is by a wide margin the most responsive of all the scopes I’ve ever used (other than other Keysights that are equally snappy). The Keysight is only 8-bit, has very small acquisition memory, the web interface and display streaming are mediocre, the user interface looks a bit dated, and the display resolution is low by today’s standards, but it’s an absolute joy to use. The Keysight is a mature product and it shows. The MXO4 is really nice in many ways, but it feels a bit unfinished in places. (Including promised or hinted features that still have yet to materialize, like zone triggering and XY mode.) I also hope R&S can hire some experienced software developers from the video editing and game engine development worlds who can help them improve UI responsiveness (which is OK, but not great), because I’m convinced it just needs some optimization.
Domitronic:

--- Quote from: Domitronic on February 29, 2024, 02:47:54 pm ---
I can tell you that the Tek MSO46 has a really slow and laggy user Interface. 6 channels are really nice to have but the UI is almost a dealbraker in my opinion.

Just now the MSO46B was released where Tek claims that speed of the UI has doubled. But i still wouldn't buy it without trying it at first.

--- End quote ---

There is now a promo ongoing for MSO Series 4B:

https://go2.tek.com/en-4-series-b-ultimate-bundle-promo-em/

But i guess the 1GHz variant is still way over the 15-20k budget.


Stewart8:
I am also looking at upgrading my oscilloscope.

I am thinking of buying R&S' MXO4 bundle deal. The MXO4 looks like a great scope and the bundle deal make it almost affordable.

My only concern is reliability.
Are the new R&S scopes reliable? I don't want to pay a lot of money and have the scope fail just outside of its warranty period and not to be able to afford to have it repaired because its list price is so expensive.

I have a Tektronix's TDS 360, which is 26 year old and is still going strong.

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts with regards to R&S and other major brands reliability.
tooki:
R&S is a company that’s been around a long time and has a very good reputation. The company that R&S bought to add oscilloscopes and the like to their portfolio, Hameg, has an equally good reputation. I have a 30ish year old Hameg in my basement, actually.

The big brand whose longevity I would question is LeCroy. At work, we’ve had three $20k-40k LeCroys fail (out of 4 units of similar generation that I am aware of). The acquisition hardware and host PCs as such are fine, but they used second-rate no-name caps in the power supplies, so they’ve all failed. (LeCroy wanted thousands to replace each PSU, but a few $ of caps is all they need.)
nctnico:
I second the lack of build quality and poor mechanical engineering on (non-rebranded) Lecroy equipment. I have a Lecroy scope costing around US $30k when new but the overall construction and build quality is just amateurish. The same goes for another piece of Lecroy equipment I used to own.
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