Rigol’s DS1052E is well known among electronics hobbyists and engineers as an affordable oscilloscope, or at it looks it seems that way. This week I went web-shopping for an oscilloscope, and everywhere I turned the Rigol scope was mentioned favorably. The consensus seems to be that you can’t do any better than the DS1052E in the sub-$500 range or so.
It seems that the DS1052E gained popularity after Dave from the EEVblog shared a way to upgrade the scope from 50MHz to 100MHz. What this means is that users were able to easily boost the maximum bandwidth of the scope to that of a higher-priced model, for free. (Word is that Rigol has since updated their firmware to break the hack.)
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I placed my order last night – not for the Rigol, but for a slightly higher priced Instek model. Even so, from what I’ve gathered, the Rigol is DS1052E is one of the best choices for beginners.
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In case you’re wondering, I went with the Instek GDS-1072A-U for $50 more than the Rigol. Not because it offers 70MHz bandwidth vs. 50MHz, but because I’ve read great reviews of its predecessor – the 1062A.
Benjamen Johnson says
Sub $500 is pretty good for a stand alone scope, but 50MHz or even 100 MHz can be pretty limiting now-a-days. I’d check out Ebay. An old co-worker of mine got a pretty nice 500Mhz Tecktronix scope for about $1000 on ebay. The nice thing about the one he bought was that it was fully controllable by computer (and you could save an entire trace right to the computer for later analysis).
Stuart says
It all depends on one’s needs. I can see myself eventually getting a higher bandwidth Tektronix, but for right now it would have been overkill and way too expensive given my current needs.
I am also hesitant to buy test equipment and things like oscilloscopes off of ebay. A 500MHz scope for $1000 is not going to be typical, but sure is a steal!
Benjamen Johnson says
No, no, you’re right about that scope being a steal and that getting things off of ebay can be risky. I just thought it was worth pointing out.
Jesse G says
Have you seen/heard anything about Owon scopes? For mechanics, until I’m shown differently, I’m convinced I’ve stumbled across the single best buy on the entire market, because their cheapest offering ($269) is 25mhz, which is plenty fast for automotive purposes. There’s nothing that even competes with it at that price, if you’re looking for a lightweight, battery-powered, 2-channel scope faster than 2mhz. Nice large, high-rez screen and knobs where there should be knobs, too. (Those may sound like funny things to notice, but you’d be surprised how many “automotive” scopes have pixalated screens and no knobs, even when they cost 5 times more than this one.)
I’m open to thoughts, as this is my first scope to ever own, but it seems to work well, although I haven’t yet had a chance to pull up a secondary pattern from ignition wires yet, as my high voltage inductive capacitive probes just got here today so that should be interesting. Also I want to analyze data line communication between modules and see how that looks on it.
Stuart says
I have seen mixed feedback about Owon, but it seems that the general consensus is that they’re decent inexpensive scopes. Less than $300 is definitely an attractive price point. I’ll be on the lookout for additional feedback, but thus far I haven’t come across any extreme views about the brand.
Jesse G says
Oh, I forgot to include a link. Ebay has good prices on used ones sometimes, but Saelig.com is certainly not bad, and provides a 3-year warranty on them, which may be worth the slight extra cost as opposed to buying used.
http://www.saelig.com/category/PSBEB100.htm