eevBLAB 101 - Why Are Tektronix Oscilloscopes So Expensive?

Answering the question of why Tektronix and the other top tier manufactuer's oscilloscopes are so expensive? Why don't they just make a low cost scope?
Here is a list of 16 reasons, can you add more?
00:00 - Why Are Tektronix Oscilloscopes So Expensive?
03:18 - Educational Market
04:00 - Warranty & Service
04:41 - Industrial Components
05:55 - Made in the USA, Supply Chain Assurance, & Export control agreements
07:29 - Applications Support
08:46 - Construction Quality & Consistency
09:07 - Longevity of Production
10:22 - Calibration & Servicing
11:34 - Measurement Confidence
12:25 - Approved Vendors
14:06 - Defacto Standard & Brand Solutions
14:51 - Accesories
15:29 - Pioneers & High end solutions
16:53 - Small things
17:56 - Consistency in User Interface
19:21 - More polished firmware
21:14 - More polished applications software solutions
Why are Fluke meters so expensive? • eevBLAB 91 - Why Are F...
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[@NICK-uy3nl]

Dave, Reason #17: Measurement Stability. High-end scopes have guaranteed measurement across operating temperature range, usually -10 C to +60 C, that's due to careful individual component selection for temp drift and thermodynamic design of the case for sufficient cooling by heat sinks and fans. The same goes for magnetic shielding and electromagnetic interference, to insure consistent results.

[@EEVblog]

Yep!

[@NeverTalkToCops1]

None of those features are proprietary to Tektronix.

[@melgross]

@@NeverTalkToCops1 that’s not the point.

[@shazam6274]

@@melgross The point is that all these and most of the features touted in the video are available for an order of magnitude less $ than the Big 4.

[@melgross]

@@shazam6274 no, completely wrong. I have scopes going back to Hp. I also have Keysight. These cheap scopes are markedly inferior to those, as they are to the TEK scopes I’ve used. He really does explain it well in the video. Maybe you didn’t bother to watch it, or most of it. The cheap models are fine for lower end uses where consistency and adherence to standards and traceability aren’t important. But there’s no guarantee with these that every scope they sell will give the same results. There’s no guarantee that they will hold accuracy over a month, much less a year. If that’s ok for you, then go for it.

[@Thesignalpath]

Thanks Dave! It is true that most hobbyists normally do not worry about "living within an ecosystem". But it is very important for professional use. Big T&M companies spend a lot of time and resources to ensure that a collection of their instruments play well together, offering something which is greater than the sum of individual parts.

[@EEVblog]

Oh, forgot to add your link, will do that now!

[@JAKOB1977]

hilarious how none of these channels - follow the basic rules on YT. especially Signal path that is so lubricated to the moon and back by vendors and constantly concludes that the YT-rules don't apply for his channel - as he is special.. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fojXgHSNjL5jZ5I Gone berserk the last 5 years and its a shame YT don't start to hand out strikes to channels that again and again.. are not willing to click the p4ld pr0m0tion boxi the pursue to get some transparency on these matter and the viewers have a channel to conclude what is influencer-4dv4rtising and what aint... gone berserk the last 5 years... not least from CN. as a danish shareholder in alphabet inc... either you have rules or you dont.

[@cjay2]

@@hp2073 Just wondering if you have proof that Dave and TSP stand in queue to buy the Apple products.

[@johncasteel1780]

HP is *great* for that.

[@RS-ls7mm]

Right before I left the company we were deciding between two $750,000 prototype scopes from Keysight and Tek. Absolutely amazing bandwidth and features. The probes cost more than some cars. The scope seemed offended if anyone with less than a Nobel prize touched it.

[@khangau4844]

Same here, we were deciding to get a 12ch tek scope to do flash characterization in our Flash controller chip. I think it costs almost a mil or something. Crazy!! But those high end scopes look and feel sooooo nice. Remote control with UI is a biggg plus

[@mrstijntje]

At my previous job we had a €150.000 oscilloscope that went up to 6GHz. It's nuts, I literally could capture an entire Wi-Fi 2.4GHz packet and scroll through it, looking at the phase shifts. One day I had to repair one of the probes. With a soldering iron. Because I've got a steady hand and someone broke the thing.. I actually loved using that thing. I

[@MrA1Sauce]

PC - Load PHd certificate.

[@notabagel]

@@mrstijntje lol we bought a used 6 ghz scope on eBay I think the thing runs windows. What a beast.

[@jeffspaulding9834]

What's that? A Fields medal? Get out of here! - High end Keysight scope, probably

[@datenraffzahn6094]

Thanks for the video! I bought a Siglent last winter and had a very pleasent experience operating it. When I encountered a "bug", and filed a report, I got response, with in a week. Following that I got a call from a very friendly support engineer requesting input on how to reproduce the problem. In german from their offices here, no Indian outsourced call center BS. I'd count that as "they take my request seriously", unlike some big software companies which tent to open a bug ticket with no solution until the universe heat death. Since I'm not a professional EE, I found the effort Siglent put into my problem solving very commendable. Heck a mail answer with "this is not an intented use case!" would have sufficed in my opinion. While talking to the guy on the phone he said that, Siglent wants to push upwards in the markets, and therefore intents to perform as well. I'm glad I spend the 1400 bucks on that scope and addons, rather than a "top tier" one, with half the features, but with services I do not need in a hobby environment.

[@sprflyenya]

I've only bought siglent bench DMMs, and of the 3 I bought, 2 would randomly lock up after a few hours of use. tech support was good and all, but that's the last siglent measurement product I'll ever buy

[@Graham_Wideman]

@@sprflyenya What model Siglent DMM was that?

[@matth3wc]

Yeah! Having test equipment that lasts a long time and has long term is very important. We got some new test equipment in just a month ago. Luckily all the SCPI commands are the same between the models with just a few more additional ones. We only had to change a few lines in our test code for the new equipment. (the test automation code is over 22k lines, if we run all tests it can take 18 hours to run!). So if the new equipment didn't support the old functinality......that would really suck! One test procedure (around 600 pages long) takes me a week to get through, but automated it takes 47 minutes! I would hate to have to interface to a new piece of test gear and have to rework all of that!.

[@EEVblog]

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

[@davidrick959]

Keep in mind that Tektronix, Keysight (formerly Agilent, formerly Hewlett-Packard) and other large T&M players PAID for the development of the SCPI control standard. They funded the SCPI Consortium and sent staff to sit in the committee meetings and work out the common commands and protocols for each class of instruments. I still have the original spiral-bound volumes that came out of that process. Unlike the platform-and vendor-specific instrument drivers you get in LabVIEW or whatever, you can use SCPI commands in whatever language or test environment you choose, and another qualified test engineer will be able to read and understand what you've done.

[@hugobloemers4425]

Totally agree with the Tek scopes being written in to procedures. I worked in the nuclear medicine field long time ago and gave factory support to branch offices supporting hospitals. If I came across a scope not being able to measure what was required, it would be very painful for the branch office. Because now the issue shifted from "your equipment is a pain to repair" to "why are you wasting everybody's time if you can't even show up with the right tools at the job?" And it did happen, occasionally because the scopes required where top of the range Tek scopes and most other medical equipment did not require exactly that. We would still help them, fly out with our own scope, etc. But the local office would get a very therapeutic bill for the effort. BTW, there is an (oddball) mid tier brand I like very much, called Picoscope. They have some very interesting products, sometimes with application focused specifications, for instance automotive or low frequency analog or embedded applications. I like this brand because it is accessible to the hobbyist but still caters to the needs of the professional market. It could be nice to have a video about this brand.

[@adzib1823]

Love Picoscope. I got to use them at 6th Form College (ages 17/18 to people outside the UK). I've only ever used their entry-level USB scopes (2200 series IIRC), but they're very reasonably priced for the hobbyist and offer enough to get started with. Also being USB it's very portable and insanely useful being able to take direct screenshots and the UI is very intuitive. Also has serial decoding for pretty much any interface you care to throw a stick at. This is in no way sponsored but if you're a hobbyist with ~£100 to drop on a scope you could do a lot worse in my opinion, and that's from about 5 years of using them throughout A-Levels and Uni studies... Unless you're big into your RF or FPGAs, there's not much even the basic one can't do well enough.

[@hugobloemers4425]

@@adzib1823 I agree with you. To add to that, I was recently on their website. (I am actually thinking of buying their 16Bit 5MHz scope, exactly to use for audio amplifier projects.) I have noticed that due to component shortages, they are reducing their portfolio. And as you can imagine, the low end products suffer. That is logic because if you are limited by a chip you can buy, you want to make it count. So if you want to buy one and your favorite model is available, buy it now before that model is put on hold.

[@adzib1823]

@@hugobloemers4425 Ah the chip shortage... Having just finished an internship with an electronics design consultancy firm, I now appreciate how much of an absolute nightmare it is. What you're saying wrt. the low end taking a hit makes sense - higher end gear is objectively more useful and also (usually) would command higher profit margins. It makes sense from a business point of view.

[@rjgarnett]

I like you think that Pico Scopes are excellent. I purchased a two channel 12 bit 256 MSa/sec, 4227 well over ten years ago and it is still going strong unlike my eight year old Tektronix MDO3024 which is dead and uneconomic to reapair. The triggering is great, noise is pretty low and the software is easy as to use.Serial decode comes with the software so you don't have to fork out money for every option. I seriously considered purchasing one of their high end systems to replace my busted MDO3024 and it was a close call between an R & S 2004 and the Pico Scope. I think Dave should do a review on a middle of the range one as they are very good. They also make some very nice probes.

[@robertsneddon731]

There are the monster "oscilloscopes", the ones that take up half of a floor-mounted 19" rack. Long time back we had a Tektronix scope system in the lab with 120 analog channel recording capability (although we could have expanded it to 240 channels). IIRC each channel could record a gigasample at 200MHz. It was integrated with the Tektronix monster logic analyser system that filled the other half of the 19" rack. Tektronix installed an on-site system engineer to ride herd on this beast when they delivered it since it was one of the first of its type. This system was used for chip design and development, saved the company millions of dollars in turnaround time for design iterations.

[@erikev]

Former Tektronix engineer here: Don't think you mentioned traceability of the measurement. All measurements are traceable to a national standard and again to the definition of the measurement. This way a customer can pass the traceable measurement along in their products. This is a must for many companies. For example when Analog produces a datasheet for its amplifiers, or a fiber optic company documents the performance of the just laid transpacific fiber, or NASA qualifies a new satellite.

[@Graham_Wideman]

Dave mentioned traceability at least four times.

[@Ryan_Smyth]

Yeah, I'm 100% in the low-end market. :D My Rigol suits a lot of what I want to do, although there are things I'd like to do that I absolutely cannot afford to. Meh. Not a big deal.

[@iamdarkyoshi]

I've got a vacuum tube tek scope at home I use from time to time. The build quality inside is absolutely remarkable, made to be serviced as quickly and efficiently as possible

[@tmmtmm]

Me too, only gripe is that the calibration procedure is always "if you can't get it in spec by twiddling all the knobs, replace all the tubes". Very costly in 2022!

[@iamdarkyoshi]

@@tmmtmm In all fairness, the fact the instrument has survived long enough to still be useful 50+ years down the line is still pretty impressive. I can't possibly see much of anything from 2022 surviving into 2072 for a service call

[@tomsherwood4650]

Owned some of the smaller 5 MHz b/w Tek tube scopes at one time. Not as bulky as their top models and the build quality inside was always worth marvelling at. They should have installed windows in their tube scopes so you could admire the insides.

[@peterhaan9068]

@@tomsherwood4650 The Tek Type 310 was a marvel of engineering and quality! It should be in a design museum!

[@outsideworld76]

Take good care of those wonderful instruments.

[@kailuagarage]

As an aerospace EE I was able to use all of the brands of scopes. Rigol for lab prototyping, medium priced Tek or Agilent scopes for brassboard flight electronics development and test systems, and higher end scopes on one of a kind rad-hard spacecraft flight instruments that take years to develop and are worth $100mil or more (Hubble, Kepler, James Web, etc).

[@SciMoTeAr]

And...? Whats the Point of your post?

[@DanielHeuwinkel]

He touched them all in a naughty place...

[@simonbaxter8001]

@@SciMoTeAr and what exactly is the point of yours? You obviously don't understand the OP or you wouldn't be asking or your just trolling!

[@kailuagarage]

@@SciMoTeAr Just that we had the flexibility to use test equipment appropriate for the task, and not just all expensive Tek scopes for everything for example.

[@tondebruijn5424]

I looked at the question where someone asked "what the point of the post was". Thought for a minute and if remove the emotion out of that question it is not a bad question. You can ask yourself the question before you put anything out what the point is. By itself that is a good thing. As someone who read the post I found the information interesting and it added to the discussion. I'm slightly worried this will end up in some insult war but I can also see that comment can be viewed as insulting if you add emotion ot the equation. So what I'm curious to find out is that I cannot look into your heart and I wonder if it is possible to cut emotion out when you answer my question when I ask you a question. The question is that what information were you looking for when you asked them "What the point of the post was? " That really is a bit of a problem since this might have been a serious question which when I look at it without emotion is not a bad question but if you take what is normal in the environment I'm in could maybe be considered as a bit insulting and I wondered if that was your intention and you were curious. I think ultimately a lot conflicts including wars can be avoided since we assume someone's intention based on our own cultural background. One example in Japanese culture it is impolite to say No. So even if the answer is No it is possible that someone will say yes just because they don't want to offend . If you don't know this is a funny story if the importance of answer is low. However in some situations you really need to know and I'm not familiar with Japanese culture to tell you how that works and I would say within the culture it's likely not a problem but when they interact with other cultures it can become a problem. Also I mean no disrespect to other cultures the culture I am in has i'ts own oddities it's just that I'm used to deal with them so they are subjectively normal to me and probably objectively abnormal if I would spend more time thinking about them.

[@issacsiavashani6532]

I use to be tek guy before I met Siglent. Siglent have more bang for their buck. By the time you add the options, you are 4 fold deep in. i Bought Siglent for my home lab. i am not a hobbyist. i work for ADI (Analog Devices). pretty much much of the ICs inside Tek or Siglent comes from ADI. I use Siglent scope and Spectrum Analyzer along with other stuff on daily bases. very happy with my purchase. Siglent manage to do it without compromising performance with 1/3 of price.

[@EfieldHfield_377]

I do work from my home lab. I have several pieces from Siglent and Rigol. Tek and hp are better, but most of the time the Rigol Siglent is good enough. If price were no option it would be Tek Hp but price is my driving factor.

[@jasonriddell]

@@EfieldHfield_377 with everything there is always "better" but at what cost and for "home lab" work a siglent as long as YOU can trust its output and it does what you need it to do it is ALL YOU NEED

[@EfieldHfield_377]

@@jasonriddell I make a living as an independent consultant. Took years to get comfortable with them but over time you learn the limits of what they are. For example once I needed to decode a CAN a SPI and a few other signals simultaneously the Rigol 4000 absolutely chocked. Tek ate it up. Once you know those limits and stay within bounds you are good.

[@EfieldHfield_377]

@@jasonriddell One other thing I have found is I only need concern myself with the Scope and Spec An. Everything else I have desktop DMM arb gens, eLoads, LCR, Power Supply, that kind of stuff pretty much works just as good. UI can be querky at times but you get use to it.

[@rjgarnett]

That's right. I've been using ADI for fifty years, remember the old orange parts manual, that was my bible. Tek are just too expensive. I''ve become an R&S man now.

[@CraigPetersen12f36b]

During my High School years I got my first introduction to test and measurement gear. First was the Tektronix 500 series scopes, then came more modern instruments like the Tektronix 465 and the TM 500 series mainframe instruments. I could almost pick out all the Tektronix gear that used as props in the television series "Battlestar Galactica". In the late 70's and early 80's I was fortunate to get tours of Tektronix and Fluke, it was an awesome experience. My dad had a friend who's wife worked at Tektronix and would get me component "roll ends". Now my home test and measurement lab is populated with gear I would of never guessed I would ever use let alone own. Instruments that were 10's of thousands of dollars can now be had for pennies on the dollar. Yes they may be old and obsolete but the quality used in their construction assures if properly maintained can last for decades.

[@lilah66]

My dad's old 310a that he brought home used in 1966 is still going strong on my bench. I fix old radios why not use an old scope?

[@galileo_rs]

You gave the answer with the question at the start: If the run of the mill battery is more expensive than a whole oscilloscope the answer is clear.

[@emilcost8613]

Excellent video Dave. I worked for 40 years in one large company, and a university research lab. Your points are exactly correct as to buying Tektronix scopes. They are a mainstay in their high end customer trust, and their reliable performance and support are second to none. Lecroy scopes are equally good and more expensive.

[@fiddlerJohn]

All the NASA labs I worked in used high end test equipment. While building a hardware DMI for the top Tektronix Oscilloscope, my firmware interface driver had an handshake issue. My local Tektronix salesmen arranged a meeting at their Portland. OR to help me solve my handshake problem. I was impressed.

[@johanfourie9385]

Worthwhile mentioning probes. Your oscilloscope probe is often the front-end of your measurement system. Tektronix design their own probes, and they are expensive, for a good reason. The combination of a Tek probe and scope is a measurement system, and the combination will still meet bandwidth specification. Probe specification is often overlooked and the importance is under estimated. Be aware of what a bad probe can do to your measurement.

[@rjgarnett]

Tek probes are very good,electrically, low capacitance, small size, but they aren't very durable. The tip resistor capsule breaks and it costs $300+ dollars to replace them.

[@McTroyd]

Love this "why so expensive?" series. If you need it, buy once, cry once, and benefit from it later. If you don't need it, the cost is immaterial, as you'll be happier with a better fitting product. 👍

[@tubastuff]

If you had a vintage Tek scope, and had a peek inside, the price premium reasons were obvious. They've also proved their quality over time. I'll still resort to my 465B to do the occasional test--there's nothing like an analog scope for some things...

[@strayling1]

Anyone else remember Nicolet? Their scopes used to be built (and priced) like tanks, perfect for field service.Mine traveled the world with me and never gave a problem.

[@markburton3306]

I used to work in the broadcast tv world and 90% of the test kit was Tetronix. On a live show if things broke and you needed to locate the fault then you couldn’t be messing about setting up your tools.

[@rickmartin6817]

I'm still in broadcast engineering (AM/FM) and quality tools are indeed a necessity. I have found that, for my purposes, the abundance of features offered by a $1,000 Siglent scope are more important to me than the extreme precision and stability of a higher-end instrument. I think I might feel differently if I worked in digital television.

[@markburton3306]

@@rickmartin6817 I’m slowly getting back into electronics as a hobby and recently got a siglent scope. It’s quite remarkable the features it has for the cost. 4 channels too

[@craigtucker777]

This is great, you should make whole series "why so expensive" . You are so smart man

[@mbak7801]

Bottom of the range Teledyne LeCroy is just a rebadged Siglent SDS5000, except more expensive and lower spec. I have just brought a R&S RTM3004 so quality is what I aim for. I don't like rebadging when it is just to hike the price.

[@sparkeyjones6261]

25-30 years ago as an import broker. Techtronix was one of my major clients. I'd bring in container loads of components for them. I had no idea their finished product was that expensive.

[@SirMo]

Back in the days of CRO (Cathode Ray Oscilloscope) analog scopes, Tek made some amazing scopes. They were regarded as the absolute best in business. Like the Tek 465B is in my opinion still one of the best scopes ever made. I have one that I just absolutely love to use.

[@SimonBauer7]

​@@SirMoyes, around the early DSO era tek really dropped the ball, their DSOs where TERRIBLE. having used these (the tds 220 to be specific) the screens especially are bad, even for the late 90s. its like drawing with a leaking pen.

[@npgatech7]

You forgot one more reason: I worked in semiconductor industry and we'd spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment. We gave absolutely zero fucks about the cost of this kind of stuff. Test equipment that's less than $50k got zero budget scrutiny. We have bigger things to worry about. All great reasons though, the Fluke video was spot on as well. Another is sales process, we usually see "Sales" in a negative way, but industrial sales for KC is amazing. They'd send people with huge pelican cases full of equipment to test it out on the actual application with a competent engineer (aka sales engineer). It is a symbiotic relationship. Professionalism is delivered for the $$$ you spend.

[@greglinder5784]

Yeah; You get this ROI thing going on: You could save some money, but it's hardly worth fighting to save $10K on something when you're in charge of managing some 7 or 8 figure production process. This is also why Capital Expense of spinning up new fab lines for PV lines and microchips seems so crazy to people outside the industry- "Well, I can get a scope for $300 that measures that": Well, maybe you can, but I've got racks of these things all being interfaced together in ways that may not make sense to you, and if the readings are out, we have to take our days' worth of production right into the dumpster at cost of MegaBucks. Modern mass production is a site to behold.

[@EEVblog]

Yeah, bang on.

[@vincentacevedo911]

This is great information, especially when you're trying to justify a budget request. Thanks for the video.

[@greglinder5784]

Calibration and "Bankability" is a big deal; Even as a small startup, we worry about this kind of stuff: We needed a SourceMeter for a contract recently, and Tek (who now owns Keithley) still supports calibration on their 2420 SourceMeters- A product that has been out for ~25 years now. There are (cheaper) options available, but we're using the 2420 to validate performance of some new innovations in the PV industry, and the better and more trustworthy the data, the more likelihood we'll get of proving our product: It's not worth the time to justify cost savings of a kbuck or so if you're trying to test and validate things that scale into mass production. I appreciate the explanation of this, as it's something that catches people by surprise if they haven't ever thought about the reliability and accuracy of their measurements.

[@radiotests]

100% And when lives, even the safety of a nation depends on reliable and effective field engineering having a portable SA that let's you easily and reliably work on Microwave or VHF transmitters and radar is "mission critical" and Textronics delivered by real MilSpec gear that you could trust with your life and the others whom you serve. That's worth $100k for the SA, input mixers and probes and reference generators that they delivered to compliment the SA. And from that cheaper systems were developed that could serve a young telecom company. HP dominated for so long that it took a huge leap in tech to earn the trust of brand loyal engineers and techs. What's more their test equipment was good enough to use that a 19yo Sailor could learn it solidly in a few days of school. I lived to work with it on my radar gear.

[@mousethefoo1230]

@@radiotests What is an SA in this context?

[@guessedUK]

@@mousethefoo1230 SA means Spectrum Analyzer

[@mousethefoo1230]

@@guessedUK Thank you!

[@youtuuba]

A few of related stories: - In my second year of college studying electronics engineering (mid-1970s), I was a starving student who desperately wanted to own an oscilloscope. I rented a basement room from some older people in a small town (they also allowed me to join them for meals at no extra charge). The husband was a almost-ready-to-retire field service technician for a major mainframe computer manufacturer, and he told me that when he went into the local branch office there were several very nice Tektronix scopes on carts that the in-house technicians used to repair circuits boards and such. He saw one of them had an "out of order" tag, and he asked his boss about it. He was told that a repairman from the local Tek office (how many other companies even had LOCAL offices?) had checked it out and said the power transformer was blown and the CRT had a lot of burn-in, and they decided to requisition a new scope rather than fix this bad one. My landlord said he had a tenant who was a struggling engineering student in need of a scope, and the paperwork was written 'writing off" that scope and it became mine. But of course it was not working, and I also had no manual for it. I asked one of my professors if I could borrow the manual for the college's lab scopes, which were in the same series (with pluggable vertical and horizontal amplifier modules) as the one I had. Perusing the manual, I saw inside the back cover a notice that Tektronix had such-and-such a long warranty, but since they manufactured their own CRTs and transformers in-house, THOSE were warrantied for "the life of the scope". My landlord asked the local Tek office to send him a copy of the service man's report, saying all the scope needed were those two items, and I send a copy to the Tektronix with a short letter (also mentioning that I had 'lost' my manual) and my address. I did not really expect to even hear back from them. About three days later, when I got home from school, my landlady said that a guy on a Tektronix van had stopped by and left two packages for me; a new CRT and a new power transformer. A couple days later, and new manual arrived in the mail. In short order, that magnificent scope was purring like a kitten again. It wasn't until years later that I realized what a nice, high end scope it was, and how lucky I was to own it, for zero expenditure of dollars. I have to wonder what the experience would have been like with today's scope manufacturers such as Rigol or Siglent !!! - I still own a fairly old Fluke digital multimeter from the mid-1970s, an original 70 series model. About once every decade, I send it back to Fluke who makes sure all is perfect and calibrated with it, and returns it with a new seal of traceable calibration, and their charge for doing this is minimal. Not many makers of multimeters will even acknowledge their older models, much less service them. - I still regularly use a couple analog scopes made by Tektronix. They still provide support for them, documentation is easily obtained. All service and calibration businesses I have had experience will will happily, readily and inexpensively repair and calibrate them, even though they are long out of production. Parts are available. I bought one of Siglent's top of the line digital scopes a few years ago, just because I wanted to have one on hand with a much higher bandwidth, four channels, and an integral logic analyzer. From the start, its user interface was buggy and awkward. The controls are not well organized, nor are the on-screen menus. Doing firmware updates is a chore and it likely to hang up or even crash mid-upgrade. Siglent USA seems to only have one person to do everything, and I have found support practically nonexistent. The scope did not come with a manual, nor was one available from Siglent. When I chastised them for selling scopes with no available documentation on features and navigating menus, their response was that they can't be expected to cater to people ignorant about how scopes work! I still have it, but never use it, and only hold onto it because I don't want to hand its problems to some other unsuspecting person. My next scope, if there is one, will most likely come from Tektronix, and I will be happy to pay their price for the much better experience.

[@gasun1274]

that was nice of them

[@EfieldHfield_377]

You had such an incredible customer support experience it's a little perplexing you purchased a Siglent. Surely you understood that level of support cost money. So was it just price that trumped your remarkable history?

[@youtuuba]

@habcollector , no, I had a tax refund to spend, thought about getting a newer scope with an integrated logic analyzer. The tax refund would only buy a Siglent, and I thought it would be OK. I could not justify a Tek scope with similar features, as they were several times the cost, and I still planned for my Tek analog scopes to be my main ones. I did not expect the Tek level of service and support from Siglent, but I expected they would have at least a downloadable manual, and was horrified that nobody had bothered to even write one, not even online tutorials about the various features.

[@EfieldHfield_377]

@@youtuuba Tek and Hp products are just better - period. But as an independent consultant I cannot afford that price point and 95% of the time they are good enough. For the other 5% I have friends with nice toys I can borrow. When I worked for companies I would always spec Tek, but on my bench (that I purchased new) is a collection of Rigol, Siglent and GwInstek products. I do have an old Hp desktop DMM, SigGen and Counter I got from eBay, back when eBay was a deal. There is a Tek MDO4034 I borrow at times when I have to, but other than that I do real work (not a hobbyist) and get paid for it. I would love a Tek or Hp of my own, but the price point the difference I cannot justify at my level of revenue. Yes there are better (in every way), but not the large price difference better. Thx for sharing your wonderful story it was a pleasure reading.

[@Graham_Wideman]

Your Tek experience was awesome! How long ago was your underwhelming Siglent experience, and which model scope?

[@MikeCnolan]

A friend of mine worked for a Major Company, and called the reps for various mfrs to find out what they had that would meet a particular need. Tek asked: How many do you expect to need? Answer: A few thousand. Tek: Tell us what you want it to do and we'll build it. It became part of the standard line (or more likely, option package).

[@jasonriddell]

that is one THING the "big houses" can do and MAKE one off tools for one off jobs even snap-on will make custom tools for custom applications and price is dependant on how many YOU order / how sellable it is after they R/D it

[@cavemaneca]

Work story: we spent over $20k on a "high end" Rigol scope, diff probes, etc etc. Lo and behold, a couple months later and dozens of messages with their support and we still couldn't get a clean eye diagram from a BASE100T signal (measured on multiple examples including an FPGA signal emulator). They kept on pushing a "solve the measurement problem" type solution rather than giving us any sort of specifications on noise floor or accepting the unit as defective. As soon as we started discussing refunds the service and customer manegement personal ghosted us. We ended up paying our own shipping and returning the equipment, and making a chargeback against the purchase with no responses from them at all. Maybe they're okay for hobbiests just trying to get something for their Arduino projects, but for any serious work they shouldn't even be looked at.

[@schrodingerscat1863]

Know exactly where you are coming from here, I once spent 2 days trying to figure out why a trace wasn't right on my Rigol scope only to eventually realise it was a firmware issue. This is why at work they spend the extra money on Keysight so they aren't paying for engineers to waste time fault finding the instrument. For my own projects the Rigol is fine because although frustrating it isn't a huge problem when I hit problems but at work that can end up costing thousands in wasted time or rework. If money was no object I would have a Keysight at home in a heartbeat.

[@guillaume8437]

Hi. I understand your frustration but I must say that if I want to make very tricky measures like you did, I would go for a higher end mfr. The lower end oscilloscopes are either for retail consumers who cannot afford a costy thoroughly designed equipment or for very generic measurements like simple analog or digital inspections but surely not for qualifications, certifications of protocols like Ethernet, USB, Displayport, DDR, etc... if you have offices full of willing HW engineers, many working on different projects and different aspects of their designs may want to do series of measures at the very same time and cannot afford to wait for one of the 4 submitted to schedule cutting edge MSO, most of all for a simple clock frequency, an I2C bus analysis, a 1kHz PWM duty cycle evaluation, Arduino projects debugging or an audio signal. That is where you Rigol or Siglent made material intervenes.

[@eone199]

did you also get the same problem with siglent?

[@davidconner-shover51]

Sorry, I don't work on the high end, I bring an oscilliscope to work (rather dirty field environment, in almost every way imaginable) for the really nasty troubleshooting, all of my other techs are rather impressed, many hardly ever heard of such equipment. all under 10Mhz, no need to lug, and likely break a $2000+ tool when a $300 one will do. for the rare, occasional work that demands such, I rent them. Don't get me wrong, I certainly do see a need for expensive equipment, just not usually in my area of expertise. If and when it becomes necessary to purchase such, I will happily do so however.

[@thetechgenie7374]

Even for home/hobbyist use I don’t recommend Rigol any longer. I made the mistake years ago with one the worst function/arbitrary waveform generator I ever had the misfortune to use. It won’t output a correct amplitude when doing AM modulation for example if you turn off and on the modulation the carrier amplitude would increase and etc. It wasn’t a defective unit, as returned and second one did exact same thing. They never fixed it in firmware in at least the couple years had it before cutting losses and selling it. I ended up replacing it with a Tektronix afg3102 and that one works as expected. Then the Rigol RF signal generator was junk as well and would freeze up at random and then started to have very poor modulation quality all the sudden. Then the lack of support. I ended up replacing it with a couple older HP RF signal generators a 1 GHz and a 3.2 GHz that much older and had to repair the 1 GHz one as brought broken with a shorted mosfet in PSU due to failed Rifa capacitor, but was NOS never used and way better then the sorry Rigol crap.

[@tmmtmm]

I work in an educational institution. We have some of those TBS scopes, never use the educational features and Rigols have been creeping in to places outside the main labs. I suspect the only reason for buying the low end Tek scopes is to maintain a good relationship in order to buy more expensive stuff.

[@gorak9000]

I thought the companies would almost be paying you to have their scopes in your institution, like Xilinx did with FPGAs in education. If you train students on platform X in school, then when they go work somewhere, they will want to use what they're already familiar with, and will thus influence the purchasing decision of the company they work for.

[@dd07871]

Teks have better FFT and UI.

[@jasonriddell]

@@gorak9000 my experience TEK and "friends" almost "paid" to setup main labs and the "retail" price is more of a "tax" issue / private school - students to home purchase I know the tech school I went to EVERY LAB had some level of "donated" gear with the automotive makers donating whole cars and systems along with "factory" grade test equipment "read" H/P Agilent - now keysight and "snap-on" hand tools and students got a one time purchase chance at graduation from H/P Agilent and snap-on

[@davidconner-shover51]

@@gorak9000 Absolutely, just as drug companies pitch to young doctors, I still use PIC microcontrollers for low end projects for that reason; I kinda grew up with them, and if it will do the required job, within budget, I will continue to use them.

[@Aaku13]

Such a great video with so much knowledge. Thank you so much!

[@RPrice_OG]

Great video, lots of good information. I'm retired and only use test equipment for hobby stuff so Siglent it is. Mainly because the CFO/Wife won't approve the expenditure for better.

[@ethzero]

Love my hobbiest Rigol that this very channel helped in the purchase. Thanks, Dave! ❤️

[@jarinaumanen8447]

I guess you also modded it if DS1054?

[@ethzero]

@@jarinaumanen8447 maybe 😉

[@saulomoura9402]

Dave I agree with you because I knew Tektronix when I started learning electronics. I have oldies scopes and feel so happy using Tektronix.

[@maurosobreira8695]

Dave, nice easter eggs of you to refer to Alan and Shahriar on this video...You just disproved your shirt! Love it!

[@mathewmcgill6266]

I started my career in the Air Force as a metrology technician back in the mid 70s. I found that both Tektronix and Hewlett Packard had the best build quality. The CCAs had gold plated lands as opposed to copper as well as some of their components. They were also made for easy maintenance having specially made sockets for components like diodes and transistors. These were not the plastic bodied sockets you purchase from Digi key either. Even the solder was specially selected. Their construction was a thing of beauty.

[@johnyoungquist6540]

I used LeCroy scope for years starting with their first in about 1980. Some cost over $48K. One was unreliable for years I finally wanted to send for repair but they denied coverage of any kind after 7 years. This cost $48K. I took it apart and found prototype PCBs with tinlead instead of gold connectors. They still would not support this. Did I remake their boards with tin lead? They offered me the cheapest obsolete 4 channel scope in trade. I got it and it was a tiny fraction of what I had in the original. I have never bought another Lecroy product. My lifetime purchases from them at that time was in excess of $250K. Not bad for one guy. I bought two Rhodies a while back and found them pretty good. Some silly limitations like averaging is on all channels or none instead individually. I have called support and talked to good folks. I got promised call back too. Lecroy is impossible to talk to. In the early years Lecroy was lightyears ahead of Tek and everyone else too bad I won't ever buy one again. I would entertain Tek or Agilent but probably not buy.

[@testboga5991]

Le Croy was great back in the day, today there isn't much reason to buy them.

[@bakagaijin7452]

Mileage may vary. I own 2 used wr 6k and a wp7k and except of worn out knobs it was a way better experience than the tek tds 5k. Although Yokogawa dlm2054 beat both of them in power electronics staff.

[@charleyfan1908]

Yea same experience with LeCroy, used to have lots of them in the lab, but their post sales and customer service are shite to say the least. We can do all the repairs in house, but they are just being beyond unreasonably unhelpful and mean. So we never bought another one from them again, mostly Tek instruments in the lab now.

[@Blitterbug]

Lucidly argued, Dave. Outstanding. So many people blinded by how good cheaper kit can be overlook the simple fact that major govmt contracts require auditing a manufacturer's supply chain for compliance - this was one of the big points that stood out for me.

[@a1guitarmaker]

I'm a part-timer now but my friend and favorite engineer still uses a Tektronix 465 analog scope every day and has probably done the same scope since the 1980s!

[@964tractorboy]

Thanks, Dave. You did indeed give (me) many more reasons why Tektronix cost more. In fact, so many that I'll be more likely to consider them in the future. To that end a good ad for high-end! I'd really like to see some examples of superior rating of components in a future tear-down if possible. It would just give me a warm fuzzy feeling...

[@pcrengnr1]

Dave you covered the subject well. The only thing that I feel like adding is, that these high end products typically meet Mil Spec & Aerospace electrical and environmental requirements like DO-160 etc. Shake, vib, temp, EMI both susceptance and emissions. These units can take a licken and keep on ticken and don't emit emi noise. Again, Dave thx for sharing.

[@MikeCnolan]

And even more than that, have been tested in that way. The lower end version might be just as good, but you can't be sure.

[@ksbs2036]

I used to work in medical equipment manufacture. Test procedures were regularly audited by FDA since lives were on the line. You can bet that I would not incorporate any equipment that required me to rewrite a test procedure every year. Each rewrite costs thousands of dollars. Pay an extra $2k to avoid a yearly rewrite is a no-brainer

[@jasonriddell]

and having a "proven" brand with up to date calibration is also good "insurance" when they DO COME calling

[@MrJohnBos]

Well said Dave. As usual, you are spot on.

[@jeffburrell7648]

What most people do not appreciate is that the cost of the test instrument can be a very small part of the overall cost in an end user T&M environment even if the cost an individual instrument is tens of thousands of dollars. Highly regulated environments such as military, medical, nuclear and others spend an enormous amount of money and time on verification and validation of test procedures and specialized test equipment to ensure that the end DUTs meet specifications. Traceable, reliable, high quality test equipment is vital for this and if, say, a particular model of oscilloscope cannot be used because it is no longer available, the cost in time and money to revalidate procedures for the new instrument can easily be an order of magnitude more expensive than the cost of the different test instrument. This is why many organizations will choose to keep using "obsolete" test equipment and even purchase it on the used market to keep their production lines working. edited for clarity

[@tohaason]

We have a lot of extremely expensive instruments at work, for several reasons: 1) Very high frequencies involved, and 2) Support - engineers from the provider actually visit occasionally, and we get calibration and things done (though salespeople also visit now and then, in order to get us to buy newer and even more expensive stuff), but no. 3) is also very important: however expensive a particular instrument is, say, $10k or $50k - that amount of money is quickly wasted if it stops us for some days because of a problem. So it's expensive, but it's more expensive if there are problems or shortcomings with something cheaper.

[@circuitblog01]

Hi Dave, in fact, I agree with 100%, especially at the 4.52 minute when you talked about the quality and grade of the components. In fact, and after a long experience, I can say that the performance of any device depends on the quality and accuracy of its components + the circuit, And that is for normal sets so what about measuring devices where accuracy is essential But also the price of the device varies according to the labor and where it was manufactured. Do not expect that the wage of a worker by the hour is the same as the wage of a worker by the day, Each category has its own market and has a quality of consumers. do not forget that even in the United States, everything has a lower price and is more desirable. Thank you for the great video as usual

[@2150dalek]

Very very informative video. I'm not launching a satellite, 🛰just a hobbyist, so I may go buy a Tektronix TBS1052C. Didn't know they provided educational courses for this. Thank you. 👀

[@EfieldHfield_377]

There was a time in my life i would only consider Tek or Hp. Then I started my consulting business and now I buy Rigol and Siglent. Tek and Hp better in just about every category but its not the price difference better. Rigol not better but usually good enough. There are times i need the Tek so I borrow it. Nice to have friends with toys.

[@ignispurgatorius5297]

I also have to wonder about the trickle down argument from high end manufacturers into their own low end scopes. These days it feels more like the adaption from the low end segment forces the larger manufacturers to include (often easy aka software) features in their lower end models, not because they may have pioneered them. I mean in about every industry you try to (atrificially) keep the status of your high end segment up for as long as possible, despite tech advances having made it easily feasible to include them in low end devices. If anything, measuring gear is one of the few industries that still get away with selling already present hardware capability via software upgrades for ludicrous prices. So I will keep cheering for the low end manfacturers, because they are the only ones that apply at least some pressure to that industry; maybe Fluke will one day ship DMMs with decent test leads again this way.

[@EfieldHfield_377]

@@ignispurgatorius5297 The high end manufactures do feel pressure of an ever decreasing customer base. And may one day have to adapt or die. At this point I figure I will never afford an hp and I think they are many people like me. So where as once upon a time you just glanced at the low end market now you stay locked in on it. I went to school on Hp Tek and Fluke yet the first multi meter I bought for my daughter was a uni t. Her first scope likely a Siglent. She won’t grow up in the world I did and I wonder if Tek and hp recognize that.

[@jasonriddell]

@@EfieldHfield_377 does NOT matter what "industry" you are in there is an ever growing divide between "consumer" and TRADE" tools and in MY opinion it is getting WORSE and FLUKE / TEK and "friends" are MOVING MORE EXPENSIVE and "away" from home consumer markets they "have" to offer the $1k "education" units to have the next generation using there products and there work flows and to "indoctrinate" students into the "professional" brands for 80% of shops a top spec "hobbyist" brand is a better tool then a LOWER tier "professional" brand

[@EfieldHfield_377]

@@jasonriddell Their business model will have to change. What they called hobby are a lot of seasoned engineers like myself doing real work for real money. The young people I mentor I use Siglent Rigol GW and BK and that’s my general preferred order. With the exception of hand held DMM I don’t buy outside of those brands.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

I would guess any brand that has sensible calibration prices and accessory compatibility should be pretty good. Of course, when you have big enough house, you want to standardize everything and then longetivity of product may be the most important factor.

[@francoisleveille409]

Bought a brand new TDS-1002 in 2003. It worked hard for me for 20 years, including a few accidental drops and it still works like I bought it last week!

[@rjgarnett]

You are lucky. I bought an MDO3024 towards the end of 2014 and it died last week. Cost of repair, a flat $9,990 dollars and the most likely problem is screen failure. I was hoping they could bury me with it still working when I died. I have never dropped it. It hasn't moved off the bench since I bought it and I kept it clean of dust and dirt. To replace it with a Tek new equivalent was going to cost me over $30,000 over twice what I paid for the 3024.

[@francoisleveille409]

@@rjgarnett In cases like that it is worth investigating further instead of buying the official Tektronix replacement part. Example : On TDS 30XXB oscilloscopes, the display is more than 500$ from Tektronix. However, they just resell you a NEC NL6448BC20 which you can get for about 99$.

[@L4b3n]

As a Lecroy Guy (Education, First 2 Companies I was working in) my workflow was really trimmed down to their specific UI. In the new company we decided to buy some new scopes and compared (and tested) similar scopes from the big 4. They all offer more or less the same bang for the buck. Having 6 devs favoring Tek against 2 favoring Lecroy made the decision quite easy. Long story short, the homelab market isn’t worth competing (to much competition in this segment) but edu really is the big deal.

[@keyboard_toucher]

I work at a large defense contractor in the US. I have seen a mixture of manufacturers in our labs (Keysight and Tektronics come to mind). I think we rent a lot of the equipment from some third party that takes care of the maintenance and calibration.

[@luminociter]

I don’t think that you see the shift happening inside Keithley, Tektronix, Agilent and LeCroy. Their newer products are riddled with bugs, at 100k plus product range one would expect extensive debugging teams and support which we did not see from either of them. I am at the research space and there we do operate all instruments to their limits. We are very very disappointed on the latest series of scopes form all the “big four”. Their integrated bugs, issues and software problems have led several institutes in revising policies and turning towards Rohde & Schwarz and Rigol high end instruments.

[@lohikarhu734]

I had experience working with new scope products, at a 'real' scope company (or three) and the difficulty of testing ALL of the possible interactions across the measurements and applications is a daunting task... I commonly found problems that the development team test folks had not found, because I used the scopes 6 hours per day, making every kind of measurement I could think of; the test guys were, in fact, happy that *I* found bugs, before they got to the customer!! BTW, the designers do an awful lot of work to ensure that the products work to spec across not just temperature, but all the possible internal parts variations, connector wear, multiple probes, and over time... as we say, 'non-trivial' ;-)

[@jasonriddell]

@@lohikarhu734 an uncle of mine worked for Tektronics and back in the day the amount of R/D and bug bounty teams WAS massive and likely larger then all of RIGOL corp I have heard that it is NOT the same anymore and much the same inside H/P instrumentation but do NOT have first hand information

[@ic7481]

At work, one fairly modern, mid-end Tektronix oscilloscope has a number of bugs, one is that voltage and time labels are the wrong way around for the cursors. I've also noticed a few other really annoying bugs.

[@rjgarnett]

Yep. After HP and Tek got taken over by the greedy rent seekers, engineering takes a back seat. It's all about trading on "The Brand." I went R &S to replace my Tek MDO3024. I would have had to sell the house to buy a Tektronix.

[@mausball]

As someone who uses scopes that cost 3-5x what that 2 series do, it's about measurement stability, the ecosystem of accessories (I have a number of odd and special purpose probes with excellent integration), and the support you get from an established company (I have a high level tech at Agilent's personal cell number).

[@jimparr01Utube]

Sensible words Sir. I bought a very basic Tek TDS1002 (50Mhz 1Gs) scope a little over 20 years ago. In the time I have had/used it, two faults occurred and both rectified. The first to appear was the self-launching power button that always caused the button to disappear under the bench for a few days. A spot of high-strength epoxy sorted THAT one. After a few years of use the second was a curious intermittent reset of the scope every once in a while - mostly when the scope was being used to monitor vehicle stuff and therefore moving about all the time. I investigated and found the EURO mains power socket was a VERY crappy design that was not electrically coherent all the time. File, big ass soldering iron and lots of solder later - fixed forever. This scope has performed perfectly up to its limitations for me in respect of measurement and diagnostic tool in all the time I have had it. Yes, I have an OWON w/battery. Great concept - not finished. MAJOR generic problem with the rotary encoders for gain and time-base. SUPER flaky. I have seen other china-origin scopes with the same problem. Part of the problem seems to be the clumsy way the panel multiplex is done. Very crappy signaling. But the encoders are ALSO most certainly physically defective components. A big shame in my view. Otherwise, OWON has slotted themselves into a nice niche in the low-end scope market. Received your 'winner' response. I do not have a bat phone - or a Crocodile Dundee knife. [ Not fussed with merch mate ]. Keep on truckin' chap.

[@vincistradivarius7381]

In comparison to what is offered in most learning institutions, the capabilities of these high end oscilloscopes is beyond astonishing. Quality above all else!

[@BYFav]

I'm completely one Dave's side, but one major point is missing why Tek scopes are expensive. Danaher Corp: 'milking the Cash-Cow to unconsciousness ®'

[@EEVblog]

There is milking for sure.

[@pekkagronfors7304]

Your reasoning applies to many different products in the industry, not just oscilloscopes. At home I use my beloved Hantek DSO5072P. Suits me perfectly.

[@greg_f298]

At one of the sites I work at, every Thursday the Tektronix van comes by and goes over all the equipment onsite. Maintenance, calibration, or whatever. They mostly work on Tek stuff but they will also do calibration on other manufacturers. They have a service contract with Tek. If something ever went terribly wrong-all the equipment was maintained by Tek and they will stand by it. No one ever got fired for using Tektronix.

[@lohikarhu734]

Certainly Germany also has export control on some products and technologies... R&S does a LOT of 'government' business with 'agencies', who require very strict control on the export of the devices and technologies in use.

[@AldoSchmedack]

My old scope is one from Rockwell-Collins. Techtronix and it is still going like new. What a scope. Reminds me of HP atomic clocks. They run forever almost! Same with many Fluke meters and Agilent Spectrum Analyzers.

[@vetnet100]

Well done review!! Thanks

[@wallitron]

Some marketing person is probably thinking you missed the "brand dilution" reason. If you make a cheap version that is lower in quality for all the reasons you mentioned, now you can't claim that your brand is industry leading in terms of quality. This is the reason you have car companies (eg Toyota vs Lexus) that have different brands depending on the market they are targeting.

[@jasonriddell]

but they CAN and DO make a "cheap" scope in there "education" lines and do NOT talk about them beyond say they exist but BRAND "value" is very important to these companies AND consumers Toyota sells almost every LEXUS car as a Toyota NOT in America as Americans WONT pay Lexus pricing for a "Toyota"

[@dariomazary1608]

Love your channel mate

[@roysigurdkarlsbakk3842]

Thanks for this one. It was interesting, however, to see the most expensive scope in that room balancing on top of the next most expensive a few centimeters away from your waving hands ;)

[@methanial73]

I worked on microwave or (mm) transmitter testing. 50ghz and many other microwave projects. That was 20 years ago, 50k was a starting price for those spectrum analyzers. Tek did make an older spectrum analyzer that was pretty good that I used. Those were good times.

[@CLUBIKLE]

I was using Tektronix 555 scopes in the 70s. Also more modern ones during my 40 years in the job including TDR for def antenna systems.

[@ItsTristan1st]

We have seen this sort of pattern before, it happened with computers. Then the big pricey brands were restricted upwards while the bottom end was eaten up. Then the mid-range was destroyed when the realization struck that the value for money was terrible. And finally the top end fell when the rate of development accelerated on the mid to low end and most feature advantages were lost. My prediction, the high end of test equipment will experience more and increasing pressure from the low end. The cost of the high end will increase and the profit margins will drop. Eventually customers will question if they really need those high end guarantees and in most cases they will conclude that they do not. This will then leave a few ultra expensive options for those who truly need it.

[@jasonriddell]

even outside of test equipment there is a BIG shift of lower end getting "better value" but NOT "better" and the pro products getting even LESS affordable and eventually pricing themselves out of contention outside of the 1% that NEED the "better X" that they offer for multiples more money

[@glasslinger]

My older low end scope had noticeable RF EMI radiation. My new Keysight 1200 series scope does not. If you do a lot of high sensitivity RF receiver work this is important! Many of these low end scopes do NOT meet their own specs! One brand supposedly 100 mhz scope only reaches 30 mhz flat. The Keysight 1200 is FLAT to the end of the bandwidth. You can actually use the damn thing to what it is advertised as! That is why you pay double. (along with the points made in the video)

[@kissingfrogs]

Was fascinated with your tube making videos.

[@ericmintz8305]

I love my 50 year old 60 MHz Tek analog scope. It's as good as the day it was made, just the thing for debugging Arduino and ESP32-based projects. Tek rocks!

[@johncasteel1780]

Likewise, I love my 30 year old, 400 MHz TEK 2465B.

[@ericmintz8305]

@@johncasteel1780 WANT ;-)

[@theondono]

I’d love a list/review of the low end (sub ~2k$) scopes from the top brands. It’s not always easy to compare them, specially the details about the “extras” like digital analyzers, how easy is to script them from a computer,…

[@jasonriddell]

I to would like to see a round up of the "education" /1000 series scopes

[@KeritechElectronics]

Same as with Fluke, Keithley, HP, Agilent etc. It's a well recognized real deal pro gear name across the whole electronics industry in the world. Tektronix has always been a very high quality brand. They haven't been popular here in Poland because they were so expensive and Western (remember the Iron Curtain? we could do with our own, Soviet, GDR, Czechoslovak etc. gear, none of that capitalist rubbish! haha) so there's very little vintage Tek gear running around, and if something pops up, it can run into thousands. Definitely not for my teeny tiny budget. Personally, I've only got a 410 physiological monitor in my collection; it's extremely well built, gold-plated PCB, well thought out assembly, touchy feely controls, just sweeeeeet! A thing of beauty and a joy for ever. BTW I had a '70s Polish knockoff-of-a-Tek all tube scope model OS-102, loved that stuff, it was beautifully built, but in no way it compared to the original. Geez, I wish I hadn't sold it... would love to have it in my lab now. Or a Tek for that matter.

[@barrybogart5436]

W2AEW is great. Lots of general scope info - not just Tek, and great ham radio info too.

[@prouttralala]

For me reason #14 "consistency of user interface" is one of the main reason companies will buy tektronix. More than 20 years ago i used Tektroniks oscilloscopes in college, high school and engineering school. So when I started to work in a company I had already multiple years of practices with the interface so it didn't took weeks to understand how it worked. And then when your company decide to buy a cheap high end oscilloscope from other companies, it takes you more time to understand the interface than to actually work on your project, and time cost money.

[@jordanclarke2996]

Some interesting points Dave, Recently purchased a New Keithley Bench instrument, Can't get the software to run no matter what. Support seems to be a tad a bit limited, I was going to purchase the software along with a SMU but I'm having second thoughts with the lacking support. Thanks for the video

[@foleoR1891]

Thanks for the video.

[@lordofelectrons4513]

I worked for Tek back in the 1970s They and Hewlett Packard manufactured the best test equipment available. This equipment was reliable even the vintage instruments with vacuum tubes. On the Mr Carson's lab channel he fires up several of these vintage scopes and meters some are about 80 years old with no restoration they function as well as the day they were made AMAZING. Also the Tek gear I have some newer some old none of these has ever failed to perform I wish to be like a Tek scope A good chance of living well beyond 100.

[@jasonriddell]

had an Uncle that worked for TEK in the 80's and went on to design and build Autonomous subs and other precision electronics and STILL uses his TEK supplied scope from the 80's that HAD made it into NORAD bunkers on repair missions

[@lilah66]

I went to an auction for my cities school district and bid on some Tek gear. I won and am now the proud owner of a 570 tube curve tracer and a 555 . I got them home and started to look them over and the 555 is the same one that I used in Mr. Bihar's class in 1971! Some clown had carved his name on the side of it and it was on this one. I checked it over and powered it up (current limited) and she came to life like it was 50 years ago. THAT is why Tektronix is so expensive. My dad was a radar engineer at GE and he told to always buy HP test gear at government surplus sales because they never got used because all the techs wanted to use the Tektronix gear so the other stuff just sat there unused.

[@n2n8sda]

How weird, just ordered a new Tektronix scope today and then this video popped up! I'm upgrading an older DPO7254.. which after 17 years still works fine and hopefully has some more life left in it. I think you covered pretty much all the big reasons why these things can cost what they do... the one I'm upgrading wasn't the most expensive model when it came out but it was still the price of a car! Fluke is also another big name that is often part of the criteria when an order is finalized, service / repair / faultfinding manuals must be written based around certain hardware that the organisation is using. You can argue that the market is somewhat locked out now but I think it could change if another company got enough fingers in the door.. but matching the reliability, inter-operability etc of the market would be quite slim. I've seen enough trouble with something as simple as an open standard USB cable when everyone is just given free reign over testing / production, big government is bad enough.. imagine if all the "same parts" suddenly didn't play nice because of timing errors.. not sure about anyone else but I don't want a MOAB accidently targeting my house because some chip in a targeting board system is slightly out of specs due to different manufacturing and testing equipment.

[@NikolasOldSchool]

These company’s really like to sell to universities. Here in Brazil, we have in our public universities labs full of top brands. We got used to the good stuff, and later in the market we feel more confident and incline to buy these brands. But, I love that we have more accessible brands either, I think everyone here love a good home lab and keep both kidneys :)

[@Tibbon]

I've got an old analog 2 channel Tektronix 80mhz scope. Also just got a Siglent SDS 1104X-E. The Siglent has so many features and packs a punch for the price. I am absolutely sure I'll have the Tektronix for the next 40+ years and I'll be able to get it repaired. The Siglent? I hope it lasts 10 years, but that is just a hope. If it breaks, it will get a cursory look over but if there isn't something obviously wrong it will probably go in the bin.

[@rjgarnett]

The bin is where my Tek MDO3024 only eight years old is going, because Tek have a fixed repair policy of $9,990 AU for these scopes.

[@theodorgiosan2570]

I have an oscilloscope that was once very expensive, but I got it for free. An HP (forget the model) 4 channel digital one, one of the very first ones. Being that I do building wiring, the only time I ever need it is if I want to look at a 3 phase circuit. Otherwise my cheap ET828 scope meter does perfectly fine, although I would like to upgrade and get a FNIRSI 2C23T for the 2 channels. When there is an affordable (sub-$500) 3 or 4 channel scopemeter I will buy it as well.

[@jeffreyyoung4104]

I have three tek scopes in my home shop. The best is a digital storage scope that has a floppy drive built in. While mine are old and 'obsolete', they are still great scopes and they hold their calibration well. I have other brand scopes, but those are my loaners....

[@thetechgenie7374]

Pretty much what I use for home hobby use is older Tektronix and HP gear. Shockingly more reliable then newer Rigol test gear made the unfortunate mistake in purchasing back in 2016 to 2017. Even for home/hobbyist use I don’t recommend Rigol any longer. I made the mistake years ago with one the worst function/arbitrary waveform generator I ever had the misfortune to use. It won’t output a correct amplitude when doing AM modulation for example if you turn off and on the modulation the carrier amplitude would increase and etc. It wasn’t a defective unit, as returned and second one did exact same thing. They never fixed it in firmware in at least the couple years had it before cutting losses and selling it. I ended up replacing it with a Tektronix afg3102 and that one works as expected with no headaches. Also have a older Tektronix AWG420 and besides the 32MB SSD that failed and having to repair power supply as bought broken, works great for 3 years with no other issues Then the Rigol RF signal generator was junk as well and would freeze up at random and then started to have very poor modulation quality all the sudden. Then the lack of support. I ended up replacing it with a couple older HP RF signal generators a 1 GHz and a 3.2 GHz that much older and had to repair the 1 GHz one as brought broken with a shorted mosfet in PSU due to failed Rifa capacitor, but was NOS never used and way better then the sorry Rigol crap.

[@johnwick7175]

I will probably stick with Keysight scopes for a long time, as it's what I was trained on and worked with and I am very familiar with them.. But I gotta say I am also starting to warm up to R&S scopes. 🥰

[@zachv1942]

I worked Test Stations and Fixtures in a Manufacturing Environment. We where able to understand each product failure mode regardless of product

[@zachv1942]

Keysight has very intuitive menus as well.

[@Maclman1]

Related to "consistency of user interface" : I use a LeCroy from 2003 at work and it's got a very similar user interface (and is fairly code compatible) with the 2020 LeCroy models

[@CMTEQ]

Measurements you can trust, accurate measurement even after years of usage without calibration. Been using one for over 12 years.

[@SciMoTeAr]

How do you know its accurate?

[@sarbog1]

Used Tektronics scopes working on Navy projects back in the 1970's ... taught many Navy techs how to use them.... on aircraft carriers demanding support ....

[@DB-um2rb]

Lol we were looking to do PCIe signal integrity testing today at work and I was asking myself the exact same thing!!!

[@DB-um2rb]

@Natalie mia gosh I heard Mr Williams Ferguson was a horrific Russian oligarch’s warlord who murders Ukrainian POW’s for Sport! Is that not true?

[@DB-um2rb]

Dude why is my comment sending me notifications about the glorious fake Mr Williams Ferguson? I know so many dudes that go by the plural name “Williams” lol lol

[@Crypto_hype_daily_news]

ນິ້ງທີ່ນີ້ລນິ ＋𝟭𝟲𝟭𝟳𝟯𝟵𝟳𝟭𝟵𝟱𝟭 າທີ່ນີ້ລນີ້👎 👎

[@Crypto_hype_daily_news]

*He's on What's Apk messenger 👆👆*

[@DB-um2rb]

Nah, I invested with “Williams”… he thinks he is 6 different William’s… you know.. multiple personality disorder. He lost my entire life savings. His shrewd investor William personality gave everything to his gambling addict William personality, who lost everything….

[@chaitanyasindagi1237]

For motor controls development and dynamometer setups where higher accuracy, a lot of channels and long term logging is important there are other companies like Yokogawa that makes the scopecorder which have very useful specialized features. No affiliation with them just a big fan and wanted to mention another expensive name in the biz that has a lot of good reasons which weren't mentioned to charge as much as they do

[@jasonriddell]

a "specialized" device for a "small" sub segment is ANOTHER reason the "professional" brands are "worth" more then "consumer" brands the scopecorder sells in VERY small number I imagine like the super high bandwidth Tek scopes and in some cases those companies will make/modify custom equipment for ONE customer

[@chaitanyasindagi1237]

@@jasonriddell I'm confused. Are you agreeing or being sarcastic, you have way too many "quotes" in that comment When there exists equipment with features that save a lot of engineering time and are able to do so reliably it's worth a lot of money. The scope corder has features like high resolution and high frequency sampling with modularity for a huge variety of channel types which makes a lot of sense for some things. They're also not actually that expensive compared to the 5 series Tek scopes for example

[@jaydee9968]

I was an amplifier application engineer for a very large semiconductor company for nearly two decades, and Rigol was one of our big customers. I used to travel to China regularly (ZTE, Huawei, Rigol, etc... as well as for training our Chinese FAEs), and have visited Rigol. You would be amazed at the performance of many -- not all -- of the components they use in their instruments. The semiconductor performance you can get today per buck is utterly amazing compared to what you could get two or more decades ago -- much of today's technology was not available at any price back then. I have to admit I'm a relic -- I remember companies bragging about their systems running at 5 MHz. LOL

[@YoutubeBorkedMyOldHandle_why]

Reminds me of decades ago as a Kid, when my life was photography. In medium format, Hasselblad was king. Still is probably. These were the cameras NASA sent to the Moon ... and are still up there. The thing is, at the time, a Hasselblad 500C cost $2000, while a Mamiya RB67 cost around $450 for a camera which could do everything and perhaps a bit more. Neither me, nor any of my friends doubted for a second that Hasselblad was the 'best in class' ... but 5 times the price? I couldn't justify it. Why buy one Hasselblad when I could have several Mamiyas? I currently own a few Hantek scopes. They are pretty good, though the software and support is marginal at best. But they were cheap, and they do the business. I guess the thing is, if you really need to spend massive amounts of money to go from 'really good' to 'the best there is' ... you will know it.

[@johnlegros1586]

absolutely true TEK is still seriuous , with R&S and they are really serious , I have 40 years use off them , they are right on the top , HP and following are now farr behind...and just a most important point , THE application notes...so good for engineers , and recab or refurbishing of an old instrument is available , not on low end stuff , and keeping components available for more than ten years ...etc...etc hope they can continue , me to other engineers always promote Tek for scopes and R&S for SA's , because I have a real true confidence in there service departement which is costly ....

[@kissingfrogs]

Many valid points but having worked in "high end" industries I have never seen a scope used for precise measurements. Lots of diagnosis, debugging and trouble shooting.. I also see lots of "high end" businesses feared into paying mega bucks for cal on equipment that just does not make sense. Sometimes yes, but for the most its a waste of time and money. Countless times I have needed to do a job but the gear is off for cal. It spends more time at cal than actual use.. Lets not forget that just because it was cal'ed today that it is accurate tomorrow. Experience and know how is key to confidence in a measurement, not a cal certificate. I have countless depressing stories regarding cal.

[@jasonriddell]

CAL is a great blame shifter "we HAD it checked talk to THEM not US

[@rjgarnett]

I agree most signals probed with scopes don't need high precision and traceability. It's a racket. If accuracy and precision is so important every scope would have to have at least a 12 bit ADC, when most have 8 bits. Logic signals values are dependent on their power rail voltages, the actual voltage of the signal doesn't require 1% accuracy. What really annoys me is very few scope models including medium to high end don't have a 10 MHz reference for the time base and sampling. Every reasonable signal generator does, arbitrary and RF. I run all my gear with a GPSDO, but none of my scopes have the necessary input.

[@eugenezagidullin4893]

I bought used TDS1002 on eBay and I'm quite happy with it despite LCDs on those models are terrible

[@bignastytrees]

Dave provides an excellent dissertation covering most of the important considerations regarding why the top 4 are the top 4 and will remain there. You can buy a Ferrari or you can buy a Chevy Spark. It all depends upon your needs and your requirements. YMMV

[@testboga5991]

Super cool video. Unfortunately my experience with Tek support was really really bad, so I don't buy from them anymore.

[@jasonriddell]

IMHO these companies "retail" support is a far cry from there "client" support channels and I assume you were a "retail" customer and did NOT get the same support a big corporate "client" would receive

[@bobkozlarekwa2sqq59]

Dave it comes down to this … good, fast and cheap. When you buy test equipment, you can have any two of these three attributes. If you you want good quality, with fast specs, it can’t be cheap… and so on.

[@nikmilosevic1696]

I know at our Uni the first and second year labs have cheaper brands like Siglent and I think one lab with Hantek, but any of the research labs will usually have bigger brands like Keysight or Tektronix etc where the equipment needs to have traceable calibration.

[@tomsherwood4650]

I got a color Tek scope some years ago at a bargain basement price with probe. I cannot find any flaws in it's function except sometimes the traces seem a little noisy, even with BW limit. Always boot-up checks OK. I ran it thru the self cal routine and it stops at a certain step and will not proceed. This is beyond the ability of a typical hobbyist to try to correct and sending it out somewhere would easily exceed the purchase price in short order. It was made in China. As long as it appears to be working fine I will live with the discrepancies that seem to have no visible issues. As for the noisy traces, I took a cue from the analog models but every cap in the switching supply tested 100% good. Some do seem to run warmish due to hi freq? It had some inscrutable "fault codes" in memory initially but I cleared them and no recurrances. To account for the self test run interrupt.

[@gerryjamesedwards1227]

I was reading an old report from BDM about hardening against EMP, and part of the ridiculous level of equipment they had to build/acquire to reliably capture each EMP event was staggering, all analog. They used Tek scopes with cameras capturing the screens, all triggered with similar techniques as were used to film the nukje tests. They really were pushing the boundaries of what was possible, and needed the expertise of a scope manufacturer like Tek to make sure that they got the data they wanted from each test. Millions of dollars of research, all reliant on being able to get usable results. It makes complete sense to me that the sort of company that can do that sort of work would find it very hard to produce cheap and cheerful versions of their gear.

[@bernardshrevejr.]

I believe you nailed down Dave. A quality scope and its support- comes at top price. So a quality $500 scope would cost an additional $2000, which means $2500 would be a budget scope.