For a few months, I was the owner of Siglent SDS824X HD, which is a really good device in case of performance and price ratio. But I have decided to perform an upgrade and get one more advanced device which supports higher bandwidth, sampling and has a bigger display. I saw the specification for Rohde Schwarz MXO34, which is really impressive, but the price point is high, especially if we assume the more advanced amateur usage. So for now, one can only dream of such a device.
I have decided on the SDS2104X HD which is still available in some shops, because Siglent changed their SDS2000X HD lineup to start from SDS2204X HD model.
In comparison to the SDS824X HD we get here:
- 10.1 inch display,
- low noise frontend with up to 500 MHz,
- 2 GSa/s (interleaving mode) or 1 GSa/s (non-interleaving mode),
- 200 Mpts/ch (interleaving mode) or 100 Mpts/ch (non-interleaving mode),
- up to 100000 wfm/s (normal mode) or up to 500000 wfm/s (sequence mode),
- built-in waveform generator up to 25 MHz,
- 50 Ohm inputs,
- probe readout,
- more advanced triggering with support for zone triggering up to 2 zones.
The build quality of the device is excellent, the encoders are much better than on the SDS824X HD. The internal fan is also fully regulated based on temperature, so the device is almost silent, where SDS824X HD was really louder. The 10.1 inch display has a nice semi-matte finish and a larger area than the SDS824X HD , which had only 7 inch display. Of course it still has 1024x600 resolution, so it will be nice if it could be a bit higher. The attached SP5050A probes support up to 500 MHz, and are also good quality. In comparison, the probes included with SDS824X HD were really cheap and not good quality. I have used Testec instead with SDS824X HD. The menu and operation of the device are the same as for SDS824X HD. I think that all options and menu are really intuitive. The built-in waveform generator is really simple, and I think that it is better to have a separate device, but for creating Bode plots or other simple measurements it should be fine. The oscilloscope has also a large set of supported decoders which is nice. I am really happy with this device.