Cheap Rigol Oscilloscope from Ebay

Only 500MS/s and doesn't say what memory depth. Also, it's not listed as current model according to the ATTEN website.

Dave.

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mib_instruments are advertising that Rigol variant for several prices on ebay.

dmm.

LeCroy's cheapest scope series, the WaveAce series are just rebadged Atten ADS1000 series. Compare pictures of LeCroy WaveAce and Atten ADS1000 and you will see they are identical, except WaveAce has a black front and ADS1000 has a white front + the LeCroy scopes have had the ATTEN logo in the upper left corner of the LCD screen removed from their firmware. Other than this the screens look identical. Atten only sell the cheapest 25MHz | 500MSa/s to 100MHZ | 1GSa/s. The most expensive DSO's in the series are reserved for LeCroy who sell them from 2 channel 60MHz | 500 MS/s (interleaved), 250 MS/s (all channels) to 300 MHz | 2 GS/s (interleaved), 1 GS/s (all channels) .

Please not Atten sell two memory depth variants of the ADS1000 series: Memory depth of ADS1000 is 4 kpts and that of ADS1000M is 2 Mpts.

The Lecroy WaveAce models has 9 kpts/Ch (18 kpts interleaved). This still put it well ahead of the rather outdated Tek low budget scopes.

Atten ADS1000:

LeCroy WaveAce:

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Hi-res pictures: Atten ADS1000:

_big.jpg LeCroy WaveAce: ce_left_m_SMALL.jpg

Just like Atten makes the cheapest scopes for LeCroy, Rigol makes the cheapest scopes for Agilent as mentioned by others earlier.

Both Agilent and GW Instek has just introduced a new entry level DSO series within the last couple of months.

GW Instek GDS-1000A (60-150 MHz | 1 Gs/s | 2Mpts):

(Probably going to replace the old GDS-1000 series (25-100 MHz | 250 Ms/s | 4 kpts).

Agilent DSO1000 series

To me the Rigol DS1000E series eBay offers still looks like the best deal among basic scopes. This is also one of the only budget scopes offered as MSO with logic analyzer. But the DS1000D series with built- in logic analyzer add a lot to the price. There's also a very big price difference between the 50 MHz version (DS1052E/D and DS1102E/D). You can alsmost buy two DS1052E at the price of one DS1102E. So if you don't need 100MH now and first think you will need it in 5 years, it's probably best to just buy the 50 MHz version. Then you can sell it again when you need something faster, and at that time faster DSOs will be cheaper and better anyway.

I don't think GW Insetek GDS1000A has really hit the market yet, so don't know what they are going to cost at eBay and eleswhere.

Currently Atten ADS1000M series looks like the best alternative to Rigol. I would not buy the ADS1000 4 kpts version, only the ADS100M

2Mpts version.

Tektronix only has 2.5kpts, but it too little, the reason it isn't bigger is because Tektronix as the only manufacturer use a analog CCD (charge-coupled device) memory to store the measurements before sampling them with a slow ADC. It's similar to the way CCD cameras works (all digital cameras), they also store the image in analog CCD memory before the A/D conversion. The analog CCD memory on the budget Tektronix DSOs also has noise issues that several users have complained about. If you turn the knob to the lowest V/div you can often see a lot of noise on budget Tektronix DSOs even with the input grounded, up to =BD division I have read. Textronix was the first in the market to introduce a physcial small cheap benchtop DSO several years ago, but all the competitors have catched up and overtaken Tektronix both on price and technology it seems. Other manufactures use fast Flash ADCs for real time sampling so they don't need the analog CCD memory Tektronix use with their slow ADCs. When you only use one of the two channels on these DSOs, they use the ADCs of both channels for interleaved sampling of one channel. this way they double the sample rate of one channel comapred to when you use both channels at the same time.

Funny how almost all oscilloscope brands except LeCroy name their cheapest DSO series something with 1000: Tektronix TDS1000B/2000B series Rigol DS1000x series Agilent DSO1000 series GW Insetek GDS1000A series Atten ADS1000 series LeCroy WaveAce series