We touched on this subject in another thread, but I’m getting close to pulling the trigger on an inexpensive scope. I’m looking to spend under $400… and lower if possible. Mostly just want to have a way to do sanity checks when I suspect I have dirty power, am missing interrupts, having noise on audio amps, etc.
I’m hearing good things about Rigol. Sort of the upper end of cost in this price bracket, but good QC. I think the Rigol DS1052E would probably be enough scope for me… the 50MHz could be limiting in the future, but on those occasions I have access to much more expensive scopes at work.
If you go the Rigol, go the 100mhz version first up; there’s virtually no price difference. (my personal view - I’m looking at the 2000 series Rigol even though it’s above your budget, because I don’t have access to anything better elsewhere).
Atten are getting an OK reputation, and Hantek would be something I would avoid; Owon is another emerging vendor.
Also, regarding the Rigol… I don’t know if they still do it but when I ordered mine (a year or so ago) from rigolna.com they had a survey that you could answer at the end of purchase (< 10 questions as I recall) and if you answered them then you got $30 off your order. So, basically the shipping and then some was free.
Well… the Rigol seems to be the favorite as I suspected. Of course I’m being a child and I ordered the flashier Atten ADS1062CAL 60Mhz for $358 with 1-day shipping from Amazon
I like the 7" widescreen, all the reviews I’ve found are pretty good, and I don’t know how much better 100MHz would be for me vs the 60. Seems like 60MHz is enough for peaking at SPI, and for my uses I won’t be troubleshooting anything faster than that.
And in the worst case I’ll be the guinea pig for your amusement. Thanks for the replies. I’ll let ya know how the un-boxing goes tomorrow.
It has a 4-year history though. The DS1052 has been around longer than all the other players, so they got the “jump” based on their price point and 2 years of sales with nothing in that space; I can’t see anyone then retrofitting “current” scope technology into a new, same price-point device with a redesigned case/screen etc etc… just not economically feasible. I expect them to drive the price point of DS2000 series down, and if you look at the feature list I still think they’re worth considering even as a hobbyist.
Here’s a question for you guys… The scope is working well so far, but when the ground clip of the probe isn’t connected to ground, there is quite a bit of noise. This is even when it is on the 1KHz probe compensation test point of the scope. Noise spikes are about 1.5V Pk-Pk.
Now the obvious answer is to use the ground clip… but using all my Tektronix scopes at work I’ve got to admit I barely ever use the clip because it doesn’t make a huge difference like it does with this one.
Is this common for cheaper scopes? Could it be the included probes?
There is a Wifi router about 15’ away but there are also many electronics including two monitors & two computers within arms reach of the scope. I probably would get very different readings if I took it to the other end of the house. Using the ground clip isn’t usually a problem, though.
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