Introduction and unboxing of the Agilent 34461A

RE: Introduction and unboxing of the Agilent 34461A

morgaine — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 12:49:21 GMT

Many thanks for the new spreadsheet link, Ian. That table packs an enormous amount of information that would take anyone spec'ing these products ages to obtain with such complete coverage. A job very well done.

I look forward very much to the usage reviews which you have planned.

RE: Introduction and unboxing of the Agilent 34461A

DAB — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 20:07:18 GMT

Excellent review, plus a truely awesome comparison with its peers.

Very good job.

DAB

RE: Introduction and unboxing of the Agilent 34461A

robrenz — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:15:33 GMT

Very nice review and comparison of 6.5 digit meters. I did a similar comparison before buying a 6.5 digit meter and that is why I ended up with a Fluke 8846A. But the 34461A interface on the graphing, statistics, histogram, an bar chart is much more versatile. Fluke trend plot is more than just graphing so it has its place. The 8846A needs a firmware upgrade to be more competitive in the graphing aspect.

RE: Introduction and unboxing of the Agilent 34461A

michaelkellett — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 11:13:50 GMT

Nice start Ian - interesting to see all your stuff re. competition but I was disapointed that you hadn't included the Rigol DM3068 - similar spec to all the other budget 6.5s but only £553 with GPIB, USB, LXI (Ethernet) and RS232 interfaces in the basic price.

I've got one and it's not bad at all - I've just ordered an Agilent34461A (Farnell wouldn't just give me one[View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-280c1f6e-9600-4b85-9426-297cd4deadd9/contentimage_5F00_2.png:16:16]) so I'll have them side by side. I'm hoping (expecting) the Agilent to be less noisy (in a small signal sense).

I haven't been able to find out if the Agilent will talk via simple TCP/IP socket without the use of any of that VXI horror - I'll let you know when I try it.

RE: Introduction and unboxing of the Agilent 34461A

morgaine — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 07:25:44 GMT

In addition to being a detailed article on the Agilent 34461A, its unboxing and first impressions, this is also the most extensive and comprehensive review of 6.5 digit multimeters that I have ever read. I want to thank Ian Griffiths for an extremely informative article that covered almost all the angles that are likely to be of interest for the target audience. It's firmly fixed in my instrumentation bookmarks, and I'll be coming back to the article many times, I'm certain of that. Many thanks, Ian!

I expect that the lack of a hardware off button is related to remote soft on/off functionality which is probably provided through the external control connections. Speaking of these, it's worth noting that according to your chart, this Agilent 34461A is the least expensive 6.5 digit multimeter with LAN connectivity, which to the eyes of a network-oriented engineer such as myself is a key selling point. (It's worth mentioning that the galvanic isolation of Ethernet at both ends of a link provides an additional level of inherent safety that is normally missing with USB, and can be very important in an industrial or lab setting.)

I'll just end with a request. Your excellent tables are probably just slices of a single larger table (the truncated USB information supports that possibility), which could be a very useful resource in its own right. Could you perhaps make the full table available as a document?

Once again, many thanks Ian, both for an excellent review and also a very clear writeup!

Morgaine.