I've had two Rigols. One is on my bench and if it weren't for the instrument interface functionality and capture straight to the PC, it'd be gone. My old analog scopes are better for what I do. Instant, no delays, no f#$king menus (the Rigol has nine individual menu buttons with sub menus- more than a Michelin 5 star restaurant) and no headscratching moments where you just stare at the thing going "what is wrong with this damn thing?- where is my signal/trace? WTF am I looking at?"
I've never yelled at a test instrument until I bought a Rigol. (you can use that quote)
I second that with a Tek DSO we have in the company. I always use the old Tek 2465 to find signals in our NMR spectrometers.
But that's just me. All my younger colleagues
hate the 2465 and much prefer the DSO. I guess it's just what you're used to work with, and that in my case the manual of the DSO is not available on the spot.
I wasted an hour yesterday trying to track down a strange signal. Gave up with the DSO, turned on my oldest 20MHz CRO and boom, problem solved in about 30 seconds. Actually going to my storeroom to pull out the old Trios I put away several years ago because I miss them so much.
You can always press the AUTO-SETUP knob on a DSO, it should show you
something for a start.
Having my own private DSO at home now (Siglent SDS 1202X-E) I can say that it is actually a joy to use. Of course you have to read the manual (220 pages!) to be able to use its higher functions but it can do
so much more than my old Tek465. And you can easily shoot yourself in your foot
as I did, of course
.
As always one should know the limits of one's measuring equipment. This is true for analog scopes as well. I recall debugging our control software with my boss for several hours because a 300 MHz RF pulse was missing until I realized that the Tek 465 we had at hand is a 100 MHz scope (I was used to a 485 which is 300 MHz) and just could not show 300 MHz
. There was no bug in the software
.