Anyone have one of these? (Agilent U1604A handheld scope/DMM)

Responding to myself here...

For $700 you can get an "Owon HDS 2062-N"

which seems to differ primarily in that...

-- 60MHz, 250Msps vs. Agilent's 40MHz, 200Msps (although I wouldn't be

-- Agilent drops to 100Msps (per channel) when both channels are used, whereas Owon *appears* to still sample at 250Msps in such cases.

-- Agilent has 125kB/channel memory, Owon only has 6kB (!)

-- Agilent has USB interfacing which -- as an option for $151 -- can be a USB host so that data can be directly saved to USB memory sticks. Owon is always a USB slave, but also has a "regular" (RS232-like) serial port.

-- Agilent has a prove calibration (square wave) output, Owon doesn't.

-- Not as many triggering options on the Owon (Agilent can do pulse-width triggering, etc.)

-- Also, not nearly as many measurements in 'scope mode (no rise rise, overshoot, etc.)

-- And no FFT option on the

-- Not as many measurements in DMM mode (no capacitance, temperature/humidity/etc... although other than capacitance, you need the right magic probes to make use of this)

-- Considerably smaller than Agilent (Owon is 18x11.5x4cm, Agilent is

24.1x13.8x6.6cm)

-- In general I would expect Owon might be fudging the specs a little more than Agilent might. (Basic DC accuracy w/Agilent at >=50mV/div is +/-3% whereas Owon is +/-5%.)

Still, for $700... wow. I remember my then-employer paying something like $350 for a Fluke 87 DMM over a decade ago, and something like $4k for the original Tek TDS720P (?) handheld-scope that was monochome and perhaps all of

20MHz and was considered quite the bargain at the time.

---Joel

You can get a real 100 MHz, 1gs/s scope for less than that, a Tek TDS

2012 maybe, or the 60 MHz version. And have all the traditional knobs to spin.

Looks from the trigger specs that Agilent is adhering to their tradition of making scopes that won't trigger. I have a friend who bought the Agilent/Rigol color scope and sold it soon after; it wouldn't trigger a lot of the time. Got a Tek.

John

At least the Agient has one big knob whereas than Owon only has buttons (like the old Tek THS720/730... which I thought had surprisingly good interfaces given this limitation).

I actually have a TDS2024, but I don't use it much since at work here we have some nice Agilent 6000-series scopes (1GHz, 4Gsps). I'm specifically after something that's small and isolated (like that TPS2024 I believe you have? -- but smaller!) so that I can go and poke around differentially at, e.g., gate drives or differential serial lines or whatever without needing needing to disconnect a bigger scope... additionally I'm thinking that one of these handheld scopes is small enough that hopefully people won't steal it from my bench as often, meaning I won't have to go and hunt down a big scope as often. :-)

One weird bug in the 6000-series software (and I do routinely update the software with anything new Agilent offers) is that it'll occasionally get confused as to what sort of probe is connected to channel 1 (like most fancier scopes today, the probes are "smart" and exchange information with the mainframe to tell it what kind of probe it is) and you have to disconnect and re-connect the probe to fix it... sometimes even requires power cycling. Grrrr...

---Joel

But often only 2.5k memory. Not enough for some stuff. I chose Instek instead, haven't looked back.

:-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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I have the Owon - works OK but user interface is awful - can live with it for the few times I need a portable scope though. Scope screen response speed is good, but DMM mode is far too slow - it has an analogue dial but it's no faster than the digital display so pretty pointless.

One odd thing about the Agilent - for what appears to be a full-function scope, it has no trigger holdoff facility. ISTR reading on the agilent forum that in slow timebases modes it only does roll mode.

[...]

scope, it has no trigger

Believe it or not but most of the mid-size DSOs don't either. Beats me why since it would be so simple to implement, pretty much for free.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Cool, thanks for the information.

And does it really display a bipolar (+/-) graph even for AC voltage (and current), as the screen shots in the user's manual suggest?

I never used the DMM mode on the old Tek THS720 other than to try it out once or twice, since I thought of it as "a scope" and had plenty of DMMs around for "a DMM." Although I suppose if you're, e.g., a field service guy and were trying to travel light it might make sense.

I'll go take a look at the Agilent forums and read up on what they say.

---Joel