Siglent Technologies SDS1202X-E 200 mhz Digital Oscilloscope 2 Channels, Grey (5-(Pack))

This is a review of the Siglent Technologies Digital Oscilloscope.I am a relative newbie to Arduino and electronics, building mostly stepper motor controllers, camera interfaces and experimenting with ESP8266 devices. For everything but the stepper motor controllers (joystick controller), I was getting by with multimeters and literally touching LEDs to different contacts to see what was hot. When I started building and facing issues getting the motors to run reliably, it was frustrating. Luckily, I caught a YouTube vid that explained how to use an oscilloscope to see what signal the Arduino was putting out (PCM to control the speed). I needed my own scope and not needing something fancy, bought a kit costing about $20. I built it, put it all together, then... nothing. Bought another one and was able to get it to work. Alas, it was glitchy. I did learn a lot about soldering and do recommend doing this, but it was unstable enough (my own fault) that I wanted a proper product.So I looked online and found a host of threads. Most pitted the Siglent against the Rigol, especially touting the number of channels in the latter. Other threads talked about the top-end frequency that each supported and how it affected the readings. It came down to the fact that a 4-channel high-frequency oscilloscope would cost about double what I was willing to spend. Though the Rigol and Siglent both had great reviews, I went with the Siglent as there would be easier calculations and adjustments for this newbie to make.The main things I like about this device was the high frequency support (200 MhZ) that would potentially allow me to troubleshoot more complex devices (e.g., video cards, radios, etc.). Two channels is one more than I'm using currently. Even for a newbie, the layout of the dials was easy to learn. Others have reported that the multiple button presses to get to math and other functions was annoying, but honestly, I use things like saving to USB and some of the math functions infrequently enough that it's not a concern. Display is easy to read.Calibrating the probes was easy using the included screwdriver and the built-in reference signal.I realize that $300 is on the high-side for a hobbyist (well, maybe :D), but after research this was most feature complete in that price range. I'm very happy with this purchase and hope to not soon outgrow it.

My unit arrived yesterday and everything seems to work as advertised. Voltage and time measurements both seem to be right on the money and my testing indicated the actual (measured) 3db bandwith was around 275 MHZ. The user interface seems pretty intuitive and the hardware buttons and knobs have an OK feel to them.One practice I have grown to hate about many competitors’ business model is the firmware disabling of many useful functions on their products. If you, their customer, want to access those features, then you pay extra to enable them. Siglent has decided not to nickel and dime their customers to death with this scope. If someone is buying an entry level scope (like this) they are probably on a budget anyway. Serial Decoding, FFT, enabling the full bandwidth, and a Calibration certificate (among others) are all included in the $379 price and would cost over $250.00 in “Options” from competitors.My biggest complaints on this oscilloscope: I could not find an obvious way to do boxcar averaging or to set the trigger position on the screen without changing the sweep delay time. Both of these seem like they could be fairly easily included in future firmware releases.Also I wish Siglent had added a HDMI port to be able to display on a larger screen.In summary, this is a very capable Oscilloscope for $379.00.

I had a nearly 30 year old surplus Tektronix 475, 200 MHz dual channel scope that died a year ago. I had opened it and tried to fix it to no avail. At some point it became clear if we fixed it, we'd spend about as much as buying this Siglent scope we'd still have a 30 year old scope that could die at any minute, and we decided to get a modern digital scope. I did a lot of research online between the Rigol, this and others, and went with this one.I've fixed several things and tested the scope with a good signal generator and find it's a very solid performer. Remember, 200 MHz in a scope means 3 dB down, not that you can't see higher frequencies, so I tested it at 500 MHz. I was easily able to observe a signal from my generator, although the amplitude displayed was lower. That's fine for some levels of troubleshooting. Yeah, it doesn't do some things as well as my old 475, notably I haven't gotten it to show an AM modulated envelope properly, but it runs rings around the Tek on other things: single event sweeps, stacking many traces, and (of course) saving screen captures to a thumb drive. And to be honest, I don't look at AM all that often to care much.I especially like that it weighs nothing compared to the Tek and I can carry it around the house to whatever I need to look at.Retired EE , RF designer, with 45 years driving an oscilloscope. The first scope I used on a job was the 475. This is my new standard.