LeCroy vs Tektronix

Well to make it short, I bought a LeCroy Waverunner 6050 about 1.5 years ago and I think it's the best buy I ever made when it come to measuring and testequipment. I really love it ...

When I bought the LeCroy, it offered clearly more bang for the buck than Tek's equivalent model (for the same price you got for example the touch screen, no sample rate reduction when using all four channels and more software options, better and longer warranty.). Finally I think that in these days, where scopes are basically unrepairable on the spot, an important feature is how long the manuafacturer warrants you that they will be able to repair it for your after the model has become obsolete. LeCroy gives you a much longer timeframe here, if I remember it correctly 7 instead of 3 years.

Whether a scope is regarded intuitive or not is to a very high degree a personal thing, get a demo and judge yourself. For what it is worth I can add that - although I've used it rather intensive in the past - I so far had to consult the manual only twice.

Klaus

Most annoying is that they have to swap amplitude and time controls. Next annoying ist that amplitude zooming is around screen center, not around signal zero.

Rene

"Jenalee K." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@j52g2000cwj.googlegroups.com:

(Is it the Tek 454 where you have to _pull_

If you bump any sort of equipment,the bump should not turn it on,but turn it OFF,as a safety measure.Think of a power supply(or a power saw);do you want it to energize if the power button was inadvertently bumped?

WRT the 453,the power switch was in the rear of the unit,and used a long rod to pull it ON,and push it OFF.

Good point Jim.

And once used to this kind of switch, it's easy t oenjoy the 465/475 scopes too (same technique).

Interesting Tektronix turned away from this with the 485 and the 2xxx series models. There they use the push-push switch technique for on/off.

To the OP: The Lecroy scopes are nice for their variety of mathematical data treatment. There is a lot you can do from math (eg. multiply "on the fly" for power measurement) via statistics (mean/average/rms/...) to limit test programming.

The LECroys are nice, and once you get used to the way the setup works and the measuremnt is going, you will like these scopes.

Same as you will like Tektronix, once you feel used to the way the setup works.

I have been able to use both of these brands, and to me: It 's amatter of flavour and budget you decide for these scopes. If you are in heavy math use, go for a LeCroy. The instruments are not cheap, but they keep their value well on the 2nd hand market.

The Tektronix are very comfortable for easy quick measuremnt, very reliabel (the 24xx series is a nice choice) and there fans are much quieter ,-)

hth, Andreas

I tried out comparable LeCroy and Tek models recently before purchasing Tek TDS5104. There's a lot to like about LeCroy: larger screen, really nice submini probes (spring tip), some display modes not available in Tek. What tipped to Tek's favor was compatibility with our existing current and high voltage differential probes. You have to go all LeCroy if you change brands. Also worth mentioning: LeCroy rate-sensitive pot controls and screen center zooming (mentioned in another post) take a LOT of getting used to... One other point: Both vendors play tricks with how they bundle their scopes, probes, and software. Also, the price is negotiable, particularly if they know you are considering purchasing the 'other' brand. Paul Mathews

If looking at new scopes you shouldn't buy before you've checked out Agilent as well. Generally deeper memory and more responsive then Tek whenever I've compared the

1. I quickly dismissed Lecroy when looking at scopes recently as I just don't like the idea of Windowes and a hard disk in a scope...

like the idea of Windowes

Agreed! A fast scope costs like a midrange server, but has the OS of a throwaway PC. I generally don't worry too much about a script kiddie turning my 11801B into a bot via RS232, but one of those Win things....

"I'm sorry, sir, but the Windows version in your oscilloscope is older than 6 months, so Microsoft no longer supports it...we recommend restoring from a backup and never connecting it to anything else ever again. Could we sell you a newer model with liquid-sodium cooled digitizers? Sir? Sir? What was that about Redmond freezing over? Not interested? Well, have a nice day."

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

You consider a selfwitten piece of code to support the scope functionality to be more solid than windows ? The chances of a software upgrade for the scope are close to zero anyway, even though there usually are tons of bugs. Regardless of the operating system. No, I wouldn't load internet explorer to browse the p*rn community with the scope.

Rene

You bet I would. I've never had an insurmountable s/w bug in a decent instrument, and I've upgraded the firmware on a few. What instruments have you had bug problems with?

The drivers are going to be self-written anyway.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Yes, because it is written by the people that designed the hardware, and contains just the code necessary to do the job, not a huge hunk of other unused junk that comes along for the ride. Incidentally the Agilent 6000 is based on VxWorks, which is designed for this sort of thing.

Actually it's the hard disk I was more worried about. When I spend several thousand on a scope I want it to last at least 10 years.

I like Lecroy's the best, followed by Tek and HP (Agilent).

Lecroy has the edge overall, especially in user interface, they specialize in scopes and you get the feeling the founder will still kick someone's a$$ if they proposed some of the weird interfaces that Tek made, HP has great logic analyzers but not so good scopes.

If Tek are the most non-intuitive scope you have used then you truely haven't used a Lecroy before! Lecroy have the hard earned reputation for being the most convoluted and non-intuitive scopes on the market by a long shot. Yes, they are very powerful, and yes, they perform well, but they are absolutely horrible to use. At our former company we had lots of mega dollar ($50,000) Lecroy scopes around, but they sat on the shelf gathering dust simply because no one knew how to drive the things. Most of the time you want to measure somethign simple, and a Lecroy scope was useless for this. Lecroy used to be streets ahead of everyone else on performance, with mega deep sample memories, well before the other players were still mucking around with 10KB memory. But now the others have caught up and Lecroy no longer has a performance advantage.

Lecroy have recently come out with new models with supposedly a new user interface, but I haven't seen these so can't comment.

IMHO the newer Agilent scope 54600 and 6000 series are the easiest to use DSO's.

Tek's aren't too bad really.

Dave :)

like the idea of Windowes

The new Tek scopes I recently saw at a trade show were really Windows PCs with an acquisition board and an display program you run after it boots. So you can run Internet Explorer and LabView and Norton Anti-Virus and Donkey Kong and stuff on it, too. And right, you can re-install Windows as often as you like.

I won't buy LeCroy on principle (Walter did me dirty once) but my TDS2012 follows the 80/20 rule: it does 80% of what the high-end scopes do and costs 20% as much.

John

Good point about Agilent, but I'm not worried about Windows support. Tek will support the scope for its practical life in the type of work I do. I'd make a different decision for a hobby. Paul Mathews

I know. I still cry sometimes.

Depending on which of us dies first, mine will be pried from my dead fingers, or wind up stuffed in my living room like Trigger (a good name for a scope, now that I think of it).

It has very low jitter, pinpoint triggering, and lotsa useful plugins that you can get for reasonably cheap.

Its only significant warts show up in low duty cycle situations--no real-time update during trace averaging and no way to acquire fewer than 512 points. At a 20 Hz rep rate, needing to average a few traces, that can get slow.

You can tell I'm still in love, can't you?

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

HP scopes may not be that good, but the more recent Agilent ones are great, and easily better than Teks in their class in terms of user interface.

Better than Nelly Belle for sure.

I'm a polygamist. I have six of them.

John

All my HP stuff is not properly done. These are the Mixed signal scope HP54645, and the E4402 3GHz spectrum analyzer. Both were shoved out the door before beta testing completed, if there was any beta testing at all.

The spectrum analyzer has WinNT as OS, IIRC.

Sure, but if you can concentrate on the hardware functionality instead of on the basics as well, then the device has the chance to be better.

Rene

I used one of these pretty much daily for 8 years - never had a problem with it.