DS1054Z(50MHz 4CH)

Arrived 3 days quicker than advertised and immediately put to use and has not disappointed. Works as advertised with many useful features. Will take some time to become familiar with all the features. As a basic tool it is very good.

My old duel beam scope of 1985 vintage had been playing up for a while so after looking around for something new this popped up. It's pure luxury, 4-traces, all a different colour so no more trying to untangle two blue lines. Storage to hold loads of waveforms that you can zoom in on, so you have time to examine what happened and loads of measuring functions so you don't need to try to squint to see how many lines a wave is using. Still finding more things I can do, but at this price and this spec' its the very best value there is out there right now.

I'm still learning how to use this scope and if you really want to know how this thing works, guts and all, then you're better heading off to find a video review from someone who knows these things well. There’s a certain Australian chap who doesn’t just do reviews, he tears these things down and figures out what makes them tick.I just needed one to supplement my ageing shop-brand 40Mhz scope, which still works, but ... 40Mhz and no storage right?Now let’s be clear, this is no Keysight or Tek scope but it’s also nowhere near in the same price bracket as said devices. But the real question is what are you going to get for your hard-earned?When it arrived, I was surprised at how light this thing is and even more surprised at how compact. After years of lugging around a CRT encased in a hefty steel box, this felt as light as a feather and that worried me.Any sense of dread was quickly dispelled when I switched on and after a few seconds of self-testing and clicking of relays, the Rigol burst into life. The screen is clear and visible from fairly severe angles although not as much as my older CRT. This isn’t really an issue for most of us as we need the instrument in a position where we can operate the many controls; and there are a bewildering amount for a machine that didn’t come with a manual! It’s online of course but I would have liked a paper booklet that I could annoy my wife with by thumbing it relentlessly while she tries to watch soaps on the TV. Oh well.Help does come in the form of a context sensitive help system which is fairly comprehensive and describes the myriad functions with words and pictures (like a real manual) accessible at any time. You can tell this is all rather new to someone whose previous experience has been with more pedestrian affairs.While there are really far and away too many functions to go over in an Amazon review, there are a few stand out features that are worth mentioning.The scope comes with a complement of four compensated x1 and x10 probes with a fairly thin coax, so that’s something serious hobbyists might want to consider worthy of an upgrade. It’s fairly straightforward to set the machine to compensate for the x10 (the mode you should be using for most work since it’s more accurate due to capacitive effects at frequency). It doesn’t have an option for smart probes (differential, current, high-tension) such as are found on higher-end machines but at this price I’ll forgive them that because I wouldn’t have expected them anyway.It does, however, come with the full complement of software features for decoding all manner of different digital signals such as RS232, TWI/I2C and SPI which is a massive bonus for hobbyists working on microcontrollers which seem to be everywhere now. I’ve seen these things demonstrated but I haven’t personally had time to do these tests.Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way before moving to what’s good. The controls. It’s not that the rotary encoders are bad, it’s more that the idents are soft and imprecise. Many important functions (including complex menu selection) are achieved using these and it’s all too easy to click once too often and pick the wrong thing. This applies even when pressing the knob to make a selection – it’s just a little too finicky. Many other functions accessible by buttons are supplied with those horrible “Sinclair Spectrum” or pencil eraser rubber things. Once again, these lack the feel of a decent button but given the price and feature set of this, frankly astonishingly specced machine, I’m prepared to overlook these shortcomings.What will be noticeable for people coming from CRT-based scopes like me or even if you’re new to them is the apparently noisy display. Where a traditional scope might display a crisp, attractive sine wave right out of your $12 XR2206 (clone) function generator this scope, like all digital scopes, will probably have a lot of nasty looking noise riding atop of it. It’s easier to see than describe but it looks bad.The first time I saw this, in my ignorance of what I was seeing, I was horrified. I checked some of the professional channels on the usual video sites and sure enough, all the digital scopes from the lowliest to the high-end ones all shared this disturbance on the display.Is this some for of weird mistake on the ADC (analogue to digital convertor) I pondered? Is it bad design? Surely not on a Tek – and that has the same issue. It turns out that the noise is an artefact of digital scopes having a much higher frequency performance and lacking a phosphor-based display.Such displays have a natural decay time. To explain, electrons are fired down the through the long vacuum tube (steered along the way by electrified plates) and strike a special chemical on the display. At the quantum level these electrons blast electrons in the material temporarily out of their “orbit” (energy state). This isn’t a natural position for the electron and as they fall back to rest, they release that energy in as light – but they don’t do it instantly and this creates a small delay (actually called decay). Televisions, computer monitors and even fluorescent lamps have employed this effect for about a century now and it’s well understood.LCDs as used in modern digital oscilloscopes don’t have this decay – the pixels switch on and off instantly (well, fast enough so our eyes don’t detect it). But this causes a problem because it exposes something that CRT scopes with their slowly decaying phosphor displays have been hiding all along. Noise! In addition to being able to read and measure much higher frequencies than ever before, modern scopes like the Rigol are also “hobbled” because they display all that nasty HF rubbish that was hiding in the slowly decaying phosphor delay.And here’s me thinking this was just a case of it being a low-end scope.But the clever folks at Rigol have even found a way to send me on a trip back to the bad old days when men were men and oscilloscopes had slow-decay phosphor CRTs. It’s hidden in the menus but the designers have incorporated a step-adjustable decay which effectively simulates an old phosphor screen. It’s not quite the same as having a “real” CRT but it goes a long way if the desire takes me.I could wax lyrical for hours about how utterly delighted I am with this purchase but I think the machine should speak for itself. Sadly, they haven’t included that just yet… maybe having it talk via the an Alexa would be bit too much? Given that the machine has an Ethernet port though, I suppose anything is possible if a hacker were to get in there.Highly recommended.

This Rigol DS1054Z worked for a short while after purchase, but developed a fault causing it to be frozen at the boot screen. I contacted Rigol and they sent a replacement unit. It took about 3 and a half months for the replacement to arrive, but I am happy now.

I needed a 4-channel stand-alone scope that could do 50Mhz to work alongside my current 2-channel 25Mhz USB Picoscope. Whilst the latter has been very useful over the years, having an all-in-one unit that does not need to be plugged.into a PC to work would be advantageous.The unit is well built and solid, with most regularly used functions available as buttons or dials on the fascia. It comes with 4 average quality 1/10x probes and a mains power lead. There are a couple of pull-out feet on the base to tilt it at an angle. These feel a bit flimsy, but have survived so far.The screen is very easy to read, but can get a bit busy when there are a number of waveforms on screen. Whilst it's not a MSO, it does offer decoding of a handful of serial protocols, and 4 channels should be enough to cope for most eventualities.It is possible to connect the scope to a network, though I've not investigated that.Finally, why did I choose this scope in particular? If you search online, and at time of this review, it is possible to unlock all the features of the scope using a key generator online. My scope came preloaded with all the features bar one - the hardware is superficially similar to the more expensive 100Mhz scope, so it should be possible to double the sample frequency by generating a key and entering the code into the scope.

I bought this as my first oscilloscope for my hobby electronics lab, opting for a four channel 50MHz model rather than one supporting higher frequencies but with only two channels. This has turned out to be a good choice: as a hobbyist you are less likely to be working with higher frequencies but the extra channels can be particularly invaluable especially when you are learning how different circuits work.

Able to decode digital signals including ASCII and can be upgraded to 100MHz. The probes are a bit flimsy with respect to the compensation screw. I got some other probes online.

Quality feel to the controls and well packed for transport