With regard to modern low cost scopes, Paul Danzer, N1II recently gave a talk on scopes at our local radio club (gnarc.org) in which he is a member.? He wrote a multiple articles on these scopes in QST magazine (Reviews in Nov. and Dec. 2023 and specifications in August 2024). I asked Paul what was most important to him in selection of a scope.? He said that the architecture of all these scopes is essentially the same, including the basic architecture and even the location of buttons and selected display colors.? Even some other test instruments have the same basic architecture (See his article in October 2024 issue on this topic). The two most important things to him about the digital scopes were:
1. Make sure the scope has a good user manual before you buy it.? Some of the scopes are badly lacking in this area while some are quite good.
2. Beware of dishonest specmanship.?
My impression was that these are more prevalent for the lower cost scopes.
-Steve K1RF
------ Original Message ------
Date 11/26/2024 9:39:14 PM
Subject Re: [QRPLabs] Cheap Scopes and Logic Analyzers
OK, let's not bash FNIRSI too much.?
?
I have their DPOX180H 180MHz two channel scope.? It works very well, and for the price, it does a very respectable job.? It hasn't failed me at all in any of the QMX related signal tracing I have done.? I don't expect it to behave like a scope costing 2x or 10x as much.? It would be nice if it went lower than 50mV per division, but most cheap scopes don't.? And while it is very good up to 120MHz or so, it does suffer somewhat in performance at its spec'd 180MHz.?? I do wish it had an A + (inv)B function, so the two channels could be used to see differential signals nicely, but otherwise it has what I need and functions well.
?
Stan KC7XE
