Starter Oscilloscope - Still Rigol DS1054Z?

[maverickronin]

Given the 47 pages of discussion on multimeters I thought ASR might be a good place to ask...

Anyway I'm looking for a first oscilloscope and been watching a ton of EEVblog recently. Given how easily the 1054Z is "hacked" to enable all the in-hardware DLC it's looking like it's still a good value in entry level 'scopes 5 or 6 years on.

I think I'd mostly be using it for building basic audio circuits, arduino projects, power supplies, and LED drivers.

Is there anything else in the same price range with a comparable or better feature set?

 

[oohlou]

Seems to be a good choice. 50MHz bandwidth can be limiting for digital circuitry these days but is plenty good enough for your use-cases. Siglent is the other budget brand. I have a Siglent SDS1204X-E which works really well for me. It has 200MHz bandwidth but cost 2x as much as the Rigol.

 

[maverickronin]

Seems to be a good choice. 50MHz bandwidth can be limiting for digital circuitry these days but is plenty good enough for your use-cases.

You can actually get 100MHz out of DS1054Z since it's the same hardware as the DS1104Z but with the bandwidth limited in the software.

Siglent is the other budget brand. I have a Siglent SDS1204X-E which works really well for me. It has 200MHz bandwidth but cost 2x as much as the Rigol.

One step down in that line, the SDS1104X-E was what seemed most comparable to me too. More features for a little more money, but not sure if I'd end up using them or not.

 

[March Audio]

Given the 47 pages of discussion on multimeters I thought ASR might be a good place to ask...

Anyway I'm looking for a first oscilloscope and been watching a ton of EEVblog recently. Given how easily the 1054Z is "hacked" to enable all the in-hardware DLC it's looking like it's still a good value in entry level 'scopes 5 or 6 years on.

I think I'd mostly be using it for building basic audio circuits, arduino projects, power supplies, and LED drivers.

Is there anything else in the same price range with a comparable or better feature set?

Probably not, with the hack its a great starter scope

 

[earlevel]

The 1054Z is an incredible bargain, so much functionality for a very modest price tag.

Note that if you read about the ability to hack it to enable the add-on features, the current version of the scope already has those enabled, so that's old news. IIRC, 100 MHz is the only thing you need to hack.

 

[Andysu]

Here is my Rigol DS1054Z

 

[H-713]

I recommend the SDS-1202X-E (I think that's the model number). Having four channels is of only somewhat useful, but the 500 uV/div range on the Siglent is quite useful. It also has dedicated volts/div knobs for each channel, which I find to be a whole lot less annoying than buttons to select which channel the knob controls.

I also consider a good analog scope to be worth having in addition to a digital scope.

 

[Andysu]

Testing Dolby Stereo CP200 with Rigol