Electrical Engineering & Electronics Design

Better to buy used test equipment that has been factory refurbished and it typically at least 25% less than new but still looks and smells like new.

Many capital equipment and test equipment manufacturers get returns that they refurbish and cannot sell as new, so you save money !

Watch out for used equipment on ebay or amazon since you will be responsible for the retesting recertification and recalibration (or repairs) for it. And you may regret it.

Yes, there is cheaper equipment, but ask yourself what you would rather have a refurbished Tektronix or a new Rigol scope ?

Also you get what you pay for in test equipment, so weigh features heavily into the equation such as :

• number of channels
• sampling rate
• sampling depth (memory)
• trigger options (I2C, SPI, CAN ... etc)
• Analog or Digital
• output ports (GPIB, 802.11)
• screen size
• mixed domain (DSO with RF)
• probes types

Better used for £ 1500 in 2015, but which can be bought for 500.

https://www.infodatas.com.br/mvb-dso-upgrade-concluido-para-banda-de-frequencia-50-mhz-minipa-mvb-dso50?utm_source=Site&utm_medium=GoogleMerchant&utm_campaign=GoogleMerchant&gclid=CjwKCAjwr_uCBhAFEiwAX8YJgdunEuWvwycOue016m5hKS5EQrCNHiCgtKdGeYVaNoOxFjp7pwCSfRoC8ZEQAvD_BwE

work at 100Mhz after 2 years

I also find these "PC USB digital storage oscilloscopes" interesting. For users with a small budget and everyone has a laptop or PC. But Of course it also depends on the preference for a complete scope or a PC based one.

Hello Singe Fonts,

I have a couple of these but I have not used them for some time now.

They are ok for basic electronics and especially hobby end electronics.

However I find these are simply no match for a good bench scope.

Bench scopes have such a large variety of functionality.

More bandwidth, high sample rate, memory depth, FFT and math functionality. When you start with a bench scope and then go back you can seriously tell the difference.

Taking budget in to consideration personally I would save my pennies and go for a good bench scope every time.

If you look at my recent threads on ADC performance considerations, you will see that this is the front end for any oscilloscope. However where the real magic takes place is typically in the post acquisition stage within the (typically) FPGA or full custom ASIC area.

Since almost all of the better scopes are real-time, just like in Software Defined Radios, the acquisition problem is like drinking out of a fire hose ! There is just only so much data that can be sampled at time, therefore the sampling rate (with Nyquist 2x being the minimum), usually defines the scope for 'depth'.

Beyond that is the Signal to Noise to pull out the real signal and separate it from the RF 'chaff'. This is why lead inductance on the probe is so important ! Also for the really good measurements, even on a crappy scope, using a fully differential probe can help compensate the S/N and improve signal fidelity.

Unfortunately buying the scope is NOT the most important consideration, it usually is also the probes ! But unfortunately that is where the major costs come into play ! High quality and good sensitivity / good bandwidth scope probes are expensive and usually most people can barely afford to buy one, let alone 2 to 4 for really good measurements.

In fact the best scopes in the future will have all the ADC in the probe and the cable will merely be power and a high speed data link, since all the other post acquisition portions can be remote once signal quantization has occurred.

Also there are many software signal analysis options that also help pick out what you need, especially for digital bus protocols such as CANbus, I2C, I2S, SPI, UART, USB, and MIL-STD-1553B.

So digging deeply into the specs, and all options, and costs is tricky as the evolution of scopes continues to incorporate all bench features into a multi-functional device, no longer limited to being just a scope.