R&S MXO 4 - Next Gen Scope - Hands-On Review and First Impressions

[@AddOhms]

Join Bald Engineer Live streams to see the MXO 4 (and other instruments) in action. twitch.tv/baldengineer. Currently, we're working on a Universal Keyboard adapter for vintage computers using a Pi Pico.

[@Rohde-Schwarz]

Thank you for this insightful and honest first impression review! We think this is an eXceptional review.

[@CodeJeffo]

1. It seems some of the menus have animations. Nope please removed them, we hate them :) Or at least give us an option to make the animation time as short as possible. 2. The FFT looks great, but you absolutely have to add a spectrogram + zone triggering in spectrogram. 3. True RF input. Why company as R&S doesn't have it it's a mystery to me. 4. You should consider to give us an SDK to develop new analysis tools. I know you want to sell those but opening the scope would be game changing. And yes, very impressive piece of engineering ! 👍👍

[@jakobh.4422]

Rohde & Schwarz Putins favorite german company when it comes to doing genocide to Europe, no wonder R&S are greasing influencers with freebies five ways to sunday and trying to wash away all the bodies you have your rep.. Joseph S Nye Hardward professor on his article about german weaponsale & advancetestgear sale to Putin between 2014 to 2021 under Merkel and a lot indicate its in fact R&S that are in these classified documents..

[@FindLiberty]

*VERY nice scope and a great review.* It would take me quite some time (like forever) to become proficient navigating through all those menus! Glad you both survived that teardown and re-assembly with only the one (hopefully minor) injury to your finger. _That battle was a real nail byter._

[@VirtueAly]

There seems to be some new heights in scope performance set here. Thanks for the in-depth review.

[@GameProgrammer79]

Just amazing scope.. a dream considering that 4-5 digit price tag!

[@miken966]

Way beyond anything I'd ever need, but I still want one. Seeing that 90% of your 'cons' list are simple UI stuff, I'm betting they'll be cured in the first patch.

[@AddOhms]

Some of the issues I brought up are deeper than cosmetic. But, you are right, some of them could be addressed in the future. (Though, I already know it won't be the *first* patch... It never is.) In terms of the physical hardware, I couldn't really find much I didn't like. It's a nice platform.

[@danishdart]

The bald engineer is one lucky duck to get a scope like that.

[@jb3757]

the amount of joy I got while watching the FAST FFT and smooth UI was not human, I think it worth every penny.

[@klausfortschbeck8369]

Such a nice video. Thanks

[@MAYERMAKES]

I especially like that the front panel is its own USB device, which makes it really easy to update either part of the device for new generations and makes it quite servicabel!

[@MaxWattage]

Great technical review, very comprehensive, with no marketing fluff or hyperbole. I appreciate the level of effort you put into this👍 It would be nice to know from a finance perspective as to whether they do any "sharp practices" such as selling you the scope and then charging extra (or even a recurring) license fees to unlock some of the functionality of the hardware you have already paid for. (I know this is common these days, but I still feel cheated when companies do this) @10:52 I'm still wondering if it was deliberate pun that you put on an ESD "Heal" Strap, right after cutting your finger. 🤔

[@AddOhms]

Most of the features I showed are standard--which in itself seems to be a shift from other scope manufacturers. Application specific stuff (like serial decode) are still options. And (so far) they are all perpetual licenses. But, those are good questions for the sales rep. ;)

[@AddOhms]

Oh and regarding "heal": I wish I had thought of that. Instead, it was just a typo. But if anyone else asks, it was a pun!

[@theschneidi]

Excellent review.

[@ernestb.2377]

One would need several days or weeks to get to know this machine better and to explore the possibilities, but nice to see at least some footage. Hard to say what I think of it. I would say that the price tag is according to the possibilities. R&S is professional equipment and this unit is no difference. Looks very good that's for sure!

[@rochskier]

I've used the FFT function on various oscopes for years, primarily to examine signals, distortion, and harmonics in the audio frequency range that were a struggle for the spectrum analyzers I had on hand at the time. Agree that the FFT on this being limited to a single channel is a bit disappointing.

[@FindLiberty]

Maybe a software upgrade could give you another FFT channel. I was hoping it could also do a Smith Chart.

[@nabun00bs]

Features and performance of $10k scopes today will trickle down to $1000 scopes tomorrow (figurative)!

[@AddOhms]

A common trend for this class and higher is "hardware accelerated" FFTs. Which seems to be digital down-conversion in hardware to me. (And, no question in my mind, R&S is leading the pack with theirs.) I think doing that down-conversion in hardware will be the next breakthrough we see in the sub-$1000 market. My guess is it we'll see it in about 5 years.

[@captainernest4307]

Great video. Very informative. Thanks

[@ruhnet]

Fantastic video.

[@sdahdul]

Great review!

[@francoisdevilliiers]

I want one!!!

[@guanqunwang6361]

This is a very good video, if you can see the components of the front-end circuit clearly, it will be perfect

[@hydrochlorotiazyd]

RTE1000 is also a exellent scope, I have it, but honestly it is not overtime. Profesjonal Design are looking oldish, MXO4 are new fresh scope, due to be placed insted of RTE1000 the price of RTE on ebay will be dropping down. Unfortunetly, prices of new MXO4 are as high as high end scope it is :)

[@timeltdme4355]

a german take on some tek inspiration, happy to see this kind of progress, any updates since? thanks!

[@AddOhms]

There was an update in December, but it was too far along for most of my feedback.

[@eugeneeugene3313]

What is the waveform transfer rate from the scope outto the host computer?

[@Psi117]

Hi James! How did you get access to the console login? Using the onboard port or through ethernet port? Thank you!

[@AddOhms]

I didn’t. It only briefly showed during boot.

[@maksymgarbuz1499]

Wow!

[@cognetic]

Since I already know I can't afford it, I'll ask.. how much is it?

[@AddOhms]

I think the 200 MHz model starts around 8400 USD. (Which is price competitive with the scopes it directly competes with.) And depends on what region you're in.

[@KF7JO]

@@AddOhms to put this into perspective, consumers are paying similar amounts for “market rate adjustments” charged by new car dealerships in 2022. If you can hold out on buying a new car until after these market rate adjustments go away, you too could afford and be a proud owner of a Rohde & Schwarz MXO4 4-channel oscilloscope with 200 MHz bandwidth.

[@PatrickInCayman]

Curious, what is the underlying OS, if you know?

[@AddOhms]

Just that it’s a Linux distro, but I don’t know which.

[@PatrickInCayman]

@@AddOhms Thanks, awesome scope. I was wondering which toolkit it was to build that slick interface.

[@AddOhms]

I'm not sure what the framework is. It could be something that R&S uses across instrument families or it could be something the scope team developed. I believe it is a cross-platform framework though because their latest Windows-based oscilloscopes have the same UI widgets. (And eventually all of their scopes will run the same core software.) I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like QT with custom widgets.

[@Dutch-linux]

What would be a good budget scope to fix audio gear ?

[@AddOhms]

For audio, I would consider the Analog Discovery.

[@Dutch-linux]

@@AddOhms thanks

[@bflmpsvz870]

Dreamy. Need to win in lotto today.

[@vanderleimartinezbotelhoju6911]

I am a teacher at a school for needy students, bringing electrical knowledge to these students, how do I get one as a donation?

[@AddOhms]

Reach out to all of the sales offices of all the T&M vendors and distributors in your area.

[@LackofFaithify]

Love the electrical electronic hardware world. The new stuff is insanely expensive while the old stuff is also insanely expensive since you always have a dedicated following of the, "this model from 100 years ago is better than any of the new stuff" crowd. The remaining tiers of gear get thrown into the aliexpress garbage thunder dome where you can count on all hopes of basic things like grounding and a UL mark that isn't a forgery to go right out the window.

[@AddOhms]

When I worked at a component company, I was in China and having dinner with a purchasing manager who spoke with English very well. We got to talking about fake marks. He laughed as he explained to me that locals will proudly brag to him about how GOOD their mark look. They'll go into detail about HOW they got it printed and the pains they went through to get it to look real. He then told me if they put that much work into their product design, he wouldn't have to care about any of that. It was an interesting conversation.

[@mike94560]

Plug in a x10 probe and try to change that in the menu. Good luck finding it.

[@AddOhms]

1. Press the CHx button 2. Select Probe 3. Change Predefined probe to "User Defined" 4. Change "Manual Attenuation" to "10 V/V" Of course, if the probe has a Readout Actuator (RA) pin, then the scope will detect it automatically.

[@marseagle]

Very nice. Though starting at over $7000. I bet if you get it with the four-wheel drive and leather seats you can get it over $10,000.

[@Mr.Not_Sure]

Wow. Even my Siglent SDS2104X Plus can do two FFTs at the same time.

[@dixsusu]

ZONE button ...... keysight mso 3000 my scope .

[@csbluechip]

Brutally dude. "It was free, so I'll only name minor problems" ... Just leaves me to wonder what the major problems are.

[@AddOhms]

I didn't see any at the time. But I had only used it for about a month (6 weeks?) So I could only mention the things I did, because that's all I had to go on. However now, a year and couple of firmware updates later, I still have not run into any major problems. You can see things the way you want, but this is not the case of me holding something back.

[@csbluechip]

@@AddOhms I think I was thrown by your quote at 15m50s ... Thank you for clarifying :)

[@nni9409]

Nice scope, but for that price lack many features for real signal analysis: histograms, advanced math ... Btw, LeCroy HDO6104 (also 12 Bit) has noise on 50mV, 1GHz, DC 50ohm of only 439uV rms or 259uV AC rms, almost double less than this new R&S MXO 4 !!!

[@N1gel]

You think most engineers use 20% of the scopes functionality. I would be very surprised if they really use 2%. Ok if your talking an old Cossor, Telequipment, Tectronix, Gould, Solartron etc then yes many people could probably did use most of it. But modern test instruments have so many great functions, it could take a lifetime to learn to use them.

[@AddOhms]

Years ago when I worked for a scope company, I participated in customer research. We put together some surveys that determined 10% was the magic number. But it is pretty subjective because you can slice the data to be any number from your 2% all the way to 20%. Regardless, we determined it was a fraction of total capability--even for engineers we identified as "power users."

[@N1gel]

@@AddOhms Hi, Yes I understand and agree 100%. Its difficult to set the human limits. Where do you draw the line for engineers of say 4 decades that understand well perhaps 90% of a complex scope and have actually used about 60% of the functions once in their life for a special job & commonly only use 8% of its functionality. Statistics could be made to say whatever the CEO or advertisers want. I suppose the answer is with hindsight - are the bean-counters happy? I havent used that R&S Scope but I notice you didnt show it doing waterfall displays and I would be amazed if it didnt do (or wont soon do) Logic analysis functions.