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| Warning about NanoVNA clones and comparison with Siglent VNA |
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| The Bootloader:
Hi! Before I could afford a proper VNA (thank you Siglent), I naturally got a NanoVNA because they are so cheap. In fact, I ended up with two NanoVNAs. One from a cheap AliExpress seller (around $35), and one from the original creator (around $80) I recently got a Siglent SSA3021X Plus which I converted to a Siglent SVA1032X (thanks again Siglent). I did a small comparison of the three instruments in real-world applications (antenna S11 testing and filter S21 testing) The biggest takeaway is that the cheap clone produces measurements which are drowned out by its own noise, presumably due to poor shielding of the different sections. The "original" NanoVNA is much more useable, and I would trust it for basic antenna tuning or filter design. For higher quality quantitative measurements, nothing beats a proper VNA, but this is significantly more expensive. Hope you enjoy this test as much as I enjoyed doing this. Comments and suggestions welcome as always. Video link: |
| The Bootloader:
I realize the YouTube compression algorithm messed up the colors of the graphs. I selected those colors because they are supposed to be visible for the majority of people including most of our colorblind peers. The original image files are attached. Additionally, a few things I forgot to mention in the video and that may be valuable for interpretation: - The screenshot of the NanoVNA shows 101 points. However, NanoVNA-App did capture all the 801 points - I left each instrument running for more than 1 hour before starting filming this video, to ensure thermal equilibrium and prevent too much drift between the calibration and the measurements - The clone NanoVNA has an offset of -20dB for S11 measurements, as described in the video. But strangely for S21 measurements, this offset changed to -10dB. I compensated accordingly when plotting the data. |
| EggertEnjoyer123:
If you look at the specs of the cheap clone, you'll see that it's only designed to go up to 900MHz. I think the more expensive SAA2 is designed for up to 3GHz. |
| The Bootloader:
Correct! Usually when testing I go past the design boundaries which allows to see where the limit actually is. Even way below 900MHz, the measurements on the clone are very noisy, whereas the genuine one still works okay. |
| gf:
Note that the SAA2 is not the "original NanoVNA". Actually it is Hugen’s NanoVNA-H which is derived from the original NanoVNA, with some improvements added. The original NanoVNA and NanoVNA-H support only up to 300 MHz natively, while up to 900 Mhz are only supported via harmonics, with significantly reduced performance. So don't expect too much beyond 300MHz. OTOH, SAA V2.2 is a completely different design, and it was a priori designed for 3GHz. The V2.2 design is not generally better than the original NanoVNA. Up to 300MHz, the original NanoVNA and NanoVNA-H are still supposed to outperform the SAA V2.2 (depending on the used firmware and settings). Btw, was your SAA V2.2 really an original V2.2 from the Tindie store, or a V2.2 clone? AFAIK, the original SAA V2.2 is no longer produced and sold for quite some time, but they sell only V2 Plus4 and newer SAA2 models. Almost all SAA V2.2 units sold today by various sellers are clones (which may or may not perform as well as the original V2.2 did). |
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