Rohde & Schwarz MXO 4 Oscilloscope Review

Рет қаралды 2,823

shabaz

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 26

@user-yj6ti5xe1x Ай бұрын

AGC for ur mic please, great review!

@shabaz_ Ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! And I appreciate the feedback. I was under the mistaken impression that KZbin would auto-level the overall audio (it seemed to do that on a few videos) but it didn't : ( and there's no way to re-upload the video without deleting this one (which would break links) so I was forced to keep it this way. I have learned from the mistake and all recent videos have much louder audio.

@Starlite4321 4 ай бұрын

Ok, here’s my feedback - EXCELLENT job. Thanks for a thorough, well thought out and presented review. Please follow up with what you’ve learned and what R&S has and has not fixed and added since you recorded this. Thank You !

@shabaz_ 4 ай бұрын

Thanks for the comments! I think it's time for another MXO 4 video, I'll start thinking about what that should look like. But to give you some feedback now; when the MXO 4 was first released, I raised about 25 issues, and their customer support was willing to accept them all and work through them, and their engineers provided feedback. Some were genuine issues, some were feature requests or more minor feature enhancement requests, and some were misunderstandings from me. Now with the latest release, I think pretty much everything I raised has been resolved; for instance, in the video, you can see that the math capability was originally quite restrictive (to about four or five terms), but that's been greatly enhanced now, so I'll provide screenshots in a later video. Some of the things I was really hoping they would implement, are now present: in particular spectrum log display is executed really well, and also there's now the ability to have 4 different channel spectrum traces simultaneously. One thing that's still missing, but I *think* may become available, is spectrum waterfall. There's also now power measurements + harmonics capability (ideally with power rail and current probes, but nothing stopping using normal probes and sense resistor or a small current sensor). There's also zone triggering which is going to take me a while to explore; it has the potential to identify what part of a waveform is responsible for spurious content for example, by drawing a zone on a spectrum display (doesn't have to be drawn on the time-domain view!). I'm looking forward to trying that (that feature was just released about a week ago).

@Starlite4321 4 ай бұрын

@@shabaz_ Thanks very much for that very thorough response ! It's especially helpful as I'm JUST about to order one myself next week. I first saw the MXO-5 review by Shahriar on his TSP KZbin channel which really got me going. Next I convinced myself the MXO-4 is essentially just a four-channel version of the MXO-5 he reviewed with basically the same feature set (it's basically two MXO-4s in one box serving 8 channels instead of 4 with a slightly larger display and a bit more memory). And now your MXO-4 videos and I'm cooked. I just subscribed to your channel and look forward to any further reviews you may decide to do on this. Again, thanks !

@Starlite4321 4 ай бұрын

@@shabaz_ So weird; just left a response here but it disappeared when I saved it ! Anyway, thanks for this very thorough and helpful response. I especially appreciate it as I'm just about to order an MXO-4 next week. I saw Shahriar review the MXO-5 on his TSP Channel which got me going, then I discovered the MXO-5 is essentially two MXO-4s in a larger box running eight channels instead of four with basically the same specs and characteristics. I only need four. Then I watched your review and now I'm cooked. I'm really happy to hear R&S has been so responsive to feedback. An extremely good sign. I"m getting to think of R&S as sort of the anti-Tektronix. Super products except honest instead of pathologically mercenary. I've subscribed to your channel and look forward to any further reviews you do. Thanks again for taking the time to do such a great job at this.

@shabaz_ 4 ай бұрын

@@Starlite4321 Hi! Yes it's weird, I can see you wrote the comments when I log in, but I can't see why they are not appearing. There's no queue/moderation or anything set against the video, so it should just immediately display. Anyway, that's great news, I hope the 'scope gives you many years of great service! It will be great to hear how you get on with it.

@Starlite4321 3 ай бұрын

@@shabaz_ Thanks for the response shabaz. Computers. Am I right ?

@101blog Жыл бұрын

A rather well done reveiw Shabaz, this is a great scope with many features and presents them in a very clean well thought out way that you have brought out in the reveiw, a scripting language or some such for this device would be wonderful as well as some of those finishing features you mention in the review .. this took ages but i cant wait for the next one ! P.S the RF fixtures were really a great extra point hope these get noticed in the E14 writen review!

@shabaz_ Жыл бұрын

Thanks! That's a good idea. It would be brilliant to be able to just run, say, Python scripts natively and build up a set of them to extend the instrument. I hope they consider it, if not for this instrument, then at least for future instruments in this generation. Automation/programmability is super important.

@r_be 13 күн бұрын

What are your thoughts on 4CH vs 8CH MXO5? I am trying to get some second opinions on this because I am planning to acquire MXO5 but 8 CH is a little bit too expensive for what I am willing to pay. Essentially I have to make a choice between 4CH 2GHz + 1 Gpts Memory or 8CH 500MHz + 500 Mpts Memory. I work mainly with power electronics (multilevel) but would like this piece of equipment to be future proof as well.

@shabaz_ 11 күн бұрын

Hi! Congrats on the MXO 5, please do comment to give your feedback on it when you receive it. That's a very difficult decision, because with power electronics, I can imagine you may well want more than 4 channels. I believe at 500 MHz with 8 channels, the MXO 5 should perform extremely well, because you've got dual MXO-EP ASICs inside, each one is at least MXO 4 power as I understand. And 500 Mpts per channel is a huge amount, I feel more than perfect for your use-case. So that seems like a great combination, plus at least there is a path to upgrade if needs radically change, without changing the hardware. To me that feels a better combination than the 4-ch 2 GHz 1 Gpts options. Both options very powerful of course.

@r_be 6 күн бұрын

@@shabaz_ Thanks for the reply. Do you foresee a situation where you might need a bandwidth higher than 500 MHz that your current instrument offers?

@shabaz_ 5 күн бұрын

@@r_be I actually use an older 1 GHz BW 'scope extremely rarely now that I'm using the 500 MHz BW one. I kind of wish R&S would offer a mode where the time-domain view is visually restricted to the licensed limit (e.g. 500 MHz), but the spectrum view to be unrestricted to the full 1.5 GHz. That would be very neat, but isn't an offered possibility. Still, 500 MHz is very usable. A good use-case for higher BW could be EMC related testing. For some high-frequency use-cases it may be just as easy (and possibly lower-cost) to switch to a separate spectrum analyzer product anyway, if the time-domain view is not essential for a particular use-case (e.g. perhaps some EMC-related tests as mentioned).

@TingILi Жыл бұрын

You must have an awesome project. Nice video.

@shabaz_ Жыл бұрын

Thanks!

@egonotto4172 Жыл бұрын

Great review.

@shabaz_ Жыл бұрын

Hi @egonotto4172, Thanks!

@sheffieldhoney Жыл бұрын

Nice review

@Chris-hy6jy Жыл бұрын

Great review! Have you had chance to compare this with the Tek 4 series?

@shabaz_ Жыл бұрын

Hi! I'm very familiar with the Tek MDO 3000, but have not used the newer 4 series unfortunately. Compared to the MDO 3000, I prefer the Tek supplied scope probes (they have a softer cable and also have built-in electronic compensation adjustment) however other than that, I find myself using the MXO 4 much more. I purchased a couple of softer cable scope probes for the MXO 4. The main difference with my workflow is now that I have the spectrum analysis turned on very frequently, since it gives the extra insight. For instance, working on a transformer-based supply, I could use the spectrum analysis on the MXO 4 to see exactly what the harmonics were like, and if there were any spurious oscillations from the driver circuit (there was, and I was able to solve it by adding a ferrite to the base of the driver transistors). I would not have seen that without the spectrum feature and the high-res acquisition. For a 12-bit 'scope, a fast, good quality spectrum view is fundamental to get the most out of it, and probably the MXO 4 has the edge here. Overall, a few things still feel unintuitive (I really like the dual A/B control knobs on the Tek scopes, their 4 series has that too) however I'm getting speedier over time with the MXO 4. Basically a few minor idiosyncrasies but now would struggle to want to go back to the 3000. Also, I originally wasn't too sure about the History control and segmented memory, since I'd never had that capability with the older scope, but now find it useful when looking to see what the variability is with logic values in protocols. For instance, if you have a burst of data with pulse width encoding, you can set up the record length and trigger such that you can capture hundreds of the sequences, and then quickly scroll through them, observing the variations, and determining if (say) any windows for sampling data are good or bad. I know from using the MDO 3000 that the Tek 4 series will be a terrific instrument, but I really like the features in the MXO 4. I hope this helps!

@Chris-hy6jy Жыл бұрын

@@shabaz_ thanks for the detailed reply. Yes, the MXO 4 really seems to be at the top of the pile when it comes to specs compared to the equivalently priced Tek or Keysight at the moment. Keysight always had the waveform update rate advantage with their Megazoom4 but the R&S seems to have topped that now. The SA functionality of the R&S seems very capable too. No need for a separate SA as long as you don't need the higher bandwidth.