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Ask HN: What are the state-of-the-art oscilloscopes today?

2 points by ollran ↗ HN
What are the state-of-the-art oscilloscopes today and what technical features are required of them? If you work with an oscilloscope on a daily basis, then what kind of oscilloscope do you prefer to work with?

I am looking for recommendations on features and specifications to support decision making, not necessarily a specific brand or model.

5 comments

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rzzzwilson
You really should give some indication of price range you are interested in and what you want to use it for. Scopes go from less than $300 for a minimal usable desktop to over $335,000 for the Tektronix DPO73304SX. And I'm sure you can spend more than that if you want to.
ollran
Oh sure. It's for hobby projects: reverse engineering and building electronic devices. Price range is somewhere between $300 and $1000.
rzzzwilson
I'm an amateur radio operator and dabble in microcontrollers generally and also specifically for amateur radio projects. I use a 100MHz 4 channel digital scope, a Rigol DS1054Z. I'm not recommending that one as it's a bit old now and you may be able to get newer scopes with more bang for the buck, but you probably want something similar or better in terms of specifications. For example, if you want to look at RF frequencies higher than 50MHz you probably want a 200MHz scope. Even if you think you don't need 4 channels get 4 anyway. When you need more than 2 your really need more than 2!

Resist the urge to go up market for your first buy. You don't really know what you want from a scope until you've used one for a while.

bradtron
I'd like to add two points, if I may: (1) After selecting and then buying a digital scope you might also consider finding a used analog scope to have as well. The analog scopes allow you to view signal features not so readily viewable with the lower end digital offerings. (2) I've not used them myself but you might also look into the Digilent; i.e., Analog Discovery 2, modules which can offer a rich feature set including a built in function generator, logic analyzer, metering etc.
ollran
Thanks for the tip. All my experience is based on the use of an analog oscilloscope. Analog Discovery 2 looks interesting though. I will definitely take a look on it.