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Comment by danaos | Hacker News Reader

> Rigol DS1054Z Digital Oscilloscope

Interesting as I'm considering buying a scope. Does this still give the most bang for your buck in 2023? Many online commenters mention the Siglent SDS1104X-E as a more modern alternative.

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The key differences: the screen is a bit better on the Siglent, Rigol makes you go through a stupid unlock routine to get your features, but (and this is the killer) Rigol has LXI (scriptable ethernet control) whereas the Siglent only appears to have a web-based remote control mechanism - substantially inferior IMHO.

The SDS1000X-E datasheet says that it supports SCPI over Ethernet, and there’s a programming manual available from Siglent (weirdly the links seem broken on their website)

They are close enough that it doesn't really matter, in my opinion. It might be marginally better, but I am not convinced it is "€400 vs €500" better.

The only real drawback of the Rigol is that both the host USB and LAN interface are buggy, so you might have trouble connecting it to a PC.

It's not going to be a popular opinion due to the 10x difference in price, but I think the Rohde & Schwarz RTB2004 is one of the best hobbyist class scopes you can get (in terms of bang/buck).

A $2000 scope is going way beyond hobbyist, though. Heck, for most people a $350 DS1054Z is already hard to justify!

So what's going on with the RTB2004 that is providing so much bang for that 10x price difference... and why do you claim that such a machine is "hobbyist class"?

Or you can buy an old crt one for £10 and see if you have use for a scope before you commit. They do take up more room though!

No way I could find anything at £10. Do you have any examples to share?

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Except that those old cheap ones are almost universally analog scopes. They are pretty much completely useless for digital work. In the current Arduino-filled world, you are probably going to need a DSO.

I think that is very misleading. It depends what you are interested in. There are lots of uses for an analogue scope...including arduino.

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