Our Recommendation for your first Benchtop Oscilloscope

Updated 20 October 2016

You’ve been working on that project for days, even weeks, and you’ve gone through all the steps of the process; meticulously ensuring everything is above board. And yet, for some unexplainable reason, your circuit is acting out.

Naturally, you have triple checked your project designs, your solder joints are all intact, your components should be fine, you’ve scoured through forums of similar stories and yet you have gotten nowhere. Sure, frustration ensues, but do you scrap your project in its entirety? Of course, not, you’re a maker, you break out the benchtop oscilloscope and see exactly what your electrons are up to.

Of course, this requires you to have the correct tool for the task, and oscilloscopes are no exception. Your scope needs to be up to scratch when it comes to all the important specs and here at Core, we want you guys to be properly equipped. We created this informative article that aimed to educate readers on what specifications were important when looking for a scope as well as the basics behind waveform lingo.

Today we wanted to narrow the broad DSO market down to a few sensible choices for makers. I know that when I decided to drop +$500 on my first scope I wanted some assurance that I was getting a decent product that did the job I needed it to do. So I figured I’d help you guys get across the line when it comes to purchasing one of the core essentials when it comes to any electronics workspace.

I am a regular guy, with a regular income and as such, I decided on a budget on the lower side of $1000.00 AUD. Even that’s a lot of money when you are talking about 1 piece of equipment, but I knew it was something that was going to become invaluable over time and I didn’t want to be rebuying one anytime soon.

Rigol is the brand that’s on the tip of everyone’s tongues when it comes to decent, affordable Digital Storage Oscilloscopes. So after a bit of research, I narrowed my search down to these guys. They also offer a suite of software for controlling your scope from a PC interface, more information on setting up and using Ultra-Scope here. The next step my process was sorting their 50+ DSOs down to a handful of options in my budget.

A quick search by price gave me a solid 5 options in the sub-$1000 AUD price range. One of those was a plus variant of another model that allows you to upgrade the DSO to an MSO at a later date, an option we have covered off on in our MSO vs DSO vs Logic Analyser article, I excluded that from possible options.


The contenders were, in the order of lowest to highest price: 

1052E

 1052e_scope1052e_specifications_table


1054z

 1054z_scope1054z_specifications_table


1102E

 1102e_scope1102e_specification_table


1074z

 1074z_scope1074z_specifications_table


Sorting through the specifications

So starting off at the top, the DS1052E is the entry level 2 Channel 50MHz Scope offered by Rigol. You get 1GSa/s as your sample rate, 500MSa/s for dual channel readings, which is great for most applications. 2 Channels are less than ideal, though, I definitely lean toward the 4 Channel options; like I said I want this thing to be as future-proof as possible. The memory depth on both of the 2 Channel scopes is quite low too, at only 16kpts which aren't great if  you are hoping to capture any sort of low-frequency signal. That said, in this price bracket the 1102E is the only scope offering 100MHz bandwidth which is great but with such a low memory depth I don't think it's going to be worth it.

The real 2 choices I was left with were the 1054z and 1074z, both great 4 channel scopes with 12Mpts of deep memory. That's more like it. The 4 channels will be great for debugging serial buses, plus they come with 4 x RP2200 Passive probes you're wanting with your 4 Channel scope. Taking a closer look at the prices between them we have the 54z for $637.00 AUD and the 74z for $917.50 AUD. The scopes are identical in every spec other than bandwidth and therein lies the decision point. Is it worth getting 20MHz for $280.00 on your oscilloscope? 

Our Recommendation: The Rigol DS1054z

The 1054z is considered Rigol's successor for the (older) 1052E, and looking at the specs you can see they have done a good job upgrading the scope for a very small price increase. I couldn't quite justify the big price jump up to the 1074z. The scope comes with a fantastic intensity graded, 7" display. It has a 1.00mV minimum vertical sensitivity which is great for my needs. The minimum horizontal resolution goes right down to 5ns/div which is more than enough.  All in all, I found that for $637.00 AUD I can get a reliable 50MHz, 4-Channel, 12Mpts, 1GSa/s Benchtop Oscilloscope that will be perfect for my general purpose needs. 

If you have a 1054z or are thinking of grabbing one, disagree with me on some of my purchasing decisions or notice a mistake, feel free to kick off the discussion below!

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