I am very unhappy about cheap (say, <2000$) scopes market.
It's all flawed stuff, and what spites me is that it seems it's intentionally flawed.
What do we have? Let's make a recap starting from 500$ up to 2000.
- the 1104x-e.
Great in terms of price/performance but it's a vacuum cleaner. It can house a fan of just 60mm, so you can't really improve the acoustical performance by installing a better one. Plus, you need to shell out other money to get the bode plots.
- the MSO5k.
The noise will eat you alive.
- the Micsigs
No statistics. I'm not gonna do paper calculations for such trivial stuff after having spent 600$ for the damn scope.
- The SDS2x+
Acoustically noisy all the same, and it starts crossing that line of price which makes you ask yourself if you should buy a western scope. So let's talk about them.
- The RTB2K
You are not going to buy it (4chs) with 2K$ and it has a horrid reflective screen, and it feels plasticky. Difficult to install a matte screen film because the screen is recessed.
- The Picos
Bad price/features ratio and the 4chs will not be available for a while.
- The KS 1204G.
1400 bucks for a 7" scope with many features missing? And the fan is noisy almost as the 1104's. No way.
So you start to think that you will save and buy a Tek 2 series. 4chs, just 70 MHz for 3000 bucks. Ok, I can live with that, after all you get a vesa mount, a big, bright sceen, a lot of features and it has the damn brand name on it, so that you can brag about owning it.
Then you discover it just got 10M memory depth. I'm not gonna spend 3 grands for a 10M scope.
So, there is no viable scope for a student/hobbyst.