Siglent SDS6204A 2 GHz oscilloscope review and demo with glscopeclient

In this video I present a short review of the Siglent SDS6204A, focusing mostly on the high speed signal integrity features, followed by a demonstration of glscopeclient paired with the instrument.
00:00 Intro
00:30 Rear panel ports
01:42 Boot time, front panel interface
03:10 Trigger controls
03:45 Rise time, measurements
05:30 Differential PRBS
06:45 Eye pattern option
09:00 Jitter analysis option
11:54 PCIe probing setup
12:15 Differential PRBS eye with glscopeclient
15:55 PCIe decoding with glscopeclient
20:10 Trigger limitations
21:40 Concluding thoughts

[@XtianApi]

I love these videos. I am just a hobbyist with a siglent sds1204x-e, but I watched this for fun, lol. Something is wrong with me

[@timeltdme4355]

i find the lack of serial decode trigger quite a repeating pattern in Siglent, did you compare this scope to something from R&S ?

[@oscarpeters1351]

nice video, I am still unsure which scope i should choose. the new Siglent SDS2104X HD or something else like a Rohde & Schwarz or Tekronix, what do you think of the user interface of the Siglent scope? do you have any suggestions what a good choice might be for an 350MHz 4 channel scope?

[@AndrewZonenberg]

I was promised a 2104X+ HD test unit in a week or two so I can see how I like it, and may do a review there as well. I expect it to be mostly the same as the 2104X+ except with the 12-bit ADC instead of 8. The UI is quite nice - smooth and responsive and generally reminds me a lot of a LeCroy scope in terms of general industrial design, except the pop-up menus are on the side rather than the bottom. I wish they supported multiple grids though - this is a feature that most higher end scopes have, and they have the screen real estate to make use of it even on the lower end models like the 2104X+. But some entry level scopes from the big names don't have that capability either.

[@oscarpeters1351]

@@AndrewZonenberg thanks, i will wait for the video to pop up on your channel :)

[@oliverkeller2342]

nice review! did your unit also exhibit a strong whining noise, emitted by the fan? its frequency is continuously adapting every few seconds which is annoying in an otherwise silent office

[@AndrewZonenberg]

I can't comment on fan noise as my lab is quite loud (about 65 dBA ambient) thanks to all of the servers and other lab equipment. Any sound this scope made was completely drowned out. I actually had to do fairly extensive denoising on the raw audio for it to not sound like I was vacuuming the whole video.

[@johannglaser]

Around 16:36, it seems that the vertical resolution of the signal is quite low. Esp. around the extremes, the quantization is clearly visible. Which vertical setting did you use at the scope? 1V/div or even coarser?

[@AndrewZonenberg]

It was 73 mV/div. I'm not sure how the fine gain works in this scope since I didn't do a full teardown of the frontend, but the excessive quantization suggests that it's probably *actually* 100 mV/div in hardware and just rescaled for display (so you lose ~1/4 of your total ADC codes offscreen). Additionally, the PCIe test used a probe with 10:1 attenuation so the actual input signal in hardware was 7.3 mV/div (likely actually 10 mV/div).

[@johannglaser]

@@AndrewZonenberg Thanks for the details! I've taken the liberty and analyzed an image. I found around 10.7 pixels per LSB, or about 6.5mV per LSB. With an 8-bit ADC this would be approx. 1.65V full scale or close to 200mV/div (assuming 8 div vertically as seen at 6:29). So, considering my inaccuracies, perhaps the scope's lowest true setting is 200mV/div (with your 10:1 probe, or 20mV/div with a 1:1 probe), and all smaller settings are software zoom.

[@johannglaser]

Apart from this "observation": Really interesting review. I liked especially when you pointed out the shortcomings, because I learned more on how to use a powerful scope. :-)

[@simonbaxter8001]

Not sure why Siglent can't expand the software functionality of their lower SDS200X Plus range to include eye diagrams, etc. In todays digital comms world, I don't know why they think adding things like CAN, CA FD, Flexray data decoders is ok at the low end, but actual signal integrity measuring features (which is what the scope is actually for) of the same signals is not even included unless you spend 3x or 4x the price!