Hi. A while back I did a video on why fluke multimeters are so expensive and that turned out to be surprisingly hugely popular. A lot of people were very interested in the reasonings behind it, and I think it's uh, time that we do another one on why Tektronix oscilloscopes are so expensive. Well, not Tektronix in particular.

This applies to basically, you know, the big Top four: Tektronix, Keysight, Rhoden Schwartz here, and Lacroix, right? They're all these big name manufacturers. Why are their oscilloscopes so expensive? And this comes around because I heard this countless times when Tektronix released their funky new two series. uh, portable sort of bench slash portable. uh, battery-powered oscilloscope.

Uh, here and people were like went, oh, that looks really cool, I want one And then they looked at the price, which is like it starts at 1800 us dollars and went uh yeah, no, I'm disappointed. Why don't Tektronix make a low-cost oscilloscope to compete with the likes of, uh, you know, the Rigols and the siblings and stuff like that? Well, there's just like the Fluke Monuments. There's lots of very interesting reasons behind this, which you may not have thought of and they may not apply to you, but let's go through them. For a tech honest oscilloscope, this one's quite affordable.

As I said, starts at eighteen hundred dollars and but it does actually go up this exact same Tektronix Two series, which is basically their bottom range in the new like a touchy feely, gooey interface Experience scope starts 1800, but it goes up to over 10 000 Usd dollars depending on how many channels, the bandwidth, and the options. Heck, just the battery. Just the battery alone for this thing actually costs more than a Rigel or a, um, a Sieveland Oscilloscope. What's going on? Why so expensive is the price difference? Because Tektronix oscilloscopes have better accuracy or better performance than uh, the uh, like lesser brand models? Well, not really.

not in this sort of like low end category. Anyway, there seems to be like two entirely different market segments. those big four names up here, and your other names like your Royals and your siblings and your own wands and your hand techs and whatnot. Um, down the bottom? Well, there's actually quite a few reasons, and a lot of these you flat out may not agree with or have absolutely no interest in whatsoever.

And these big companies. That's fine by them because they don't want to enter into the lower end market. And it's not like they don't Tectronix, Keysight, and other major brands they do actually offer. sort of like a cheaper one, but they're more designed for the educational market.

They're not designed for, you know, just like the general hobbyist or general one-man band organization looking for like a 500 class oscilloscope. They don't really focus on the bang per buck in that section because they don't want to really compete down in that you know, low and bottom end market. that is not their traditional market and they don't probably don't feel comfortable the bigger names are just happy to leave that market to uh, the smaller companies who are just absolutely dominating that now. So apart from the educational market which is quite big by the way, when you get those educational deals and a lot of especially like the Tektronix low-end uh, educational ones for example, have like stuff built in for education and things like that.

That and they really target it and they come with a lot of material as well. Uh, educational material behind them. That and that costs money to actually develop. All that.

and it's what the institutions want. And that's why you often find Um in the institutions rather than you might think. Oh, they can save a bit of coin by you know, buying a ryego or cigarette or hand tech or something else. but they buy the Tektronix or the key sites or whatever because they actually have a lot of this educational material behind it, which is more valuable than just saving a few bucks on a scope.

So a lot of these reasons might be the same or similar across the high-end tier manufacturers. But we'll just talk specifically about Tektronix. First up is warranty and warranty options. Generally your high tier manufacturers are going to offer better warranty uh, solutions than in the year of your lower tier and that costs money though even the Tektronix One Tds 1000 and 2000, uh series those older ones they had like a limited lifetime warranty on them.

Uh, and the the new ones you can get like various options um, for depending on your budget and you know how you want to be taken care of. And the lower tier manufacturers. Yes, some are getting better, some might have a three-year warranty or something like that, but it's not nearly as good as the higher tier manufacturers. Generally, your warranty support will be much better.

One of the major reasons they're not low cost is because they use higher grade, usually industrial rated components things like the Lcds and the touch screens and stuff like that. Whereas your cheaper lower tier manufacturers because they're designing for a lower price bracket, they're going to use more consumer grade you know, Lcds, touch screens, and other components, whatever components they can get. and also because they will talk about later longevity of production. They have to ensure that those components they've got a massive supply of those for a long, long time so that they can keep a manufacturing the same quality scope for a long time for their customers who really need that longevity of support.

So the higher tier manufacturers are essentially operating in a different uh, production space really with a different production mindset than the lower tier manufacturers that are almost making sort of like, if you can call it uh, consumer level uh devices for the more you know, consumer hobby, hobbyist, low end market whereas your top tier suppliers have to design their production and thinking of their supply chains and everything else around having that product available for a very long time using prime spec components. Now an important thing is made in Usa or made in Germany or wherever for the top tier manufacturers. Now of course this Tektronix 2 series is not made in the Usa, it's made in Shanghai in China. But there's a huge difference here.

A lot of the high-end units for Tektronix are made in the Usa. But the other interesting thing is that Tektronix actually have and they own and operate their own production facilities in Shanghai in China. They have done actually for the last 20 years so they don't subcontract out things and this is important to a lot of government Uh contracts and stuff like that. They need to be able to secure the Uh supply chain, have greater control over the manufacturing and supply train before governments and other institutions will actually trust those companies.

and because they have tight control over their own owned and operated manufacturing facilities, you can be companies can be more assured that you know the product supply chain is legitimate and they don't sneak stuff in there and all the rest of it. And the other thing is export control agreements as well. A lot of especially Us government stuff don't know about Europe. Leave it in the comments if you know a lot of the Us government stuff.

is export control restricted means they have to be made in the Usa and stuff like that. So it is like really important and it costs a lot more to have stuff manufactured uh, in countries like the Us or Germany or somewhere else like that. Apart from you know, like bottom of the barrel, whoever can assemble it the cheapest in China. Next up, you've got application support.

Now it goes without saying that the application support engineers that you're going to get from the likes of Tektronix are going to be way better than the bottom tier manufacturers. and this costs serious money. Heck, Tektronix have Alan walkie, the Youtuber, the famous Youtuber. He's great videos.

I'll link him in down below. Absolutely fantastic. He's one of their you know, senior applications guys and you can get support from him if you buy a Tektronix. I'm like he'll come to your workplace I guess and he'll you know, like seriously, um, Anyway, W2aw, I'll link to his youtube channel down below and that costs.

I'm sure he costs serious coin or at least it better Techtronics. I hope you're paying him well. and that's not just for the product itself, but all the other uh stuff, accessories and all the other software and other support uh, structure behind, um, the oscilloscope. Generally you're going to get much better and higher quality support for from a top tier manufacturer and you're paying for that.

You generally won't get that from a lower tier manufacturer because they just basically make a product. Here it is, or does it work Okay, we'll You know we'll swap it Like you know. I'm not saying they're all bad, but they're certainly not in the same class as your higher tier manufacturers and that costs coin. Next up, you've got construction quality and consistently, as a general rule, you can probably bet your bottom dollar that the higher higher tier manufacturers are going to have a greater tighter control over uh, the components that they're using the products compared to, you know your 400 dollar you're buying from one of the bang per buck manufacturers.

Next is longevity of production and this can be very important for your higher end military and industrial and other you know, government, uh, departments who write procedures around the products and they do, you know, and they integrate them into test environments and they want to make sure that they can still buy that same oscilloscope and get that same experience. uh, like consistently over uh, time. So that's why higher end manufacturers might produce the same oscilloscope the same product for 10 or 20 years. It's because, and well, they'll probably keep making it as long as Uh Uk, as long as a high-end customer keeps actually requesting that, and when and then they'll have like last time buys and they'll you know, phase them out gently and stuff like that, and you know, move key customers over to products if they have to do it eventually.

After you know, 10, 15, or 20 years or something, so you don't really get that in the lower tier manufacturers they go. Oh, here's our latest Uh scope and it lasts a couple of years on the market. Oh, here's our new latest scope. Last end, they stopped production of the old one and you have to rewrite your procedures or do whatever.

And you know, design your test environments around a new product and all sorts of things. Once again, this doesn't apply to everyone. but for those customers that need this, sort of, uh, longevity of production, it's really important and that costs money. Next up is calibration procedures and service information.

Okay, if you send a Tektronix oscilloscope to any calibration lab, they're going to go. Oh yeah, Tektronix scope. Okay, we have a set price to do that. We've got all the test instructions from Tektronix, we've got all the jigs and the rigs and the service information, and we've got all the calibration information and all the automated scripts and we've got everything set up.

No worries, leave it with us. We'll uh, calibrate that. but if you buy one of the like, the 400 scopes here, well, it could cost more than that to actually get it traceably calibrated from a you know, not a certified Cal lab. depends on what you want, but yeah, it's like they're gonna go.

Oh, okay, you want us to calibrate this hand tech oscilloscope? Oh yeah, I guess we could do that manually, but uh, we haven't done one before and we don't have the automated scripts. Yeah, we can do it, but like, no, it's just it's not the same And the top tier manufacturers will usually have their own in-house service and calibration as well, so you don't have to go to any third party. You can get it take care of by the manufacturer and that costs money to actually maintain these sorts of services. In fact, I know that one of the Tektronix service guys in Colorado I believe actually watches the video.

So Hi! Next up is a thing I've mentioned in other videos called measurement Confidence. Your high-end manufacturers have built up a lot of trust in the industry, trust with the customer base, and if you buy one of these Tektronix oscilloscopes, you can. You know you're going to have more measurement confidence in this. especially when you get traceably calibrated every year and you build up the measurement history.

I'll have to link in a video about what is calibration and the importance of it and stuff like that Your average user doesn't really need to care about that. But for customers who take calibration and measurement confidence and metrology, seriously, it's an important thing. Not so much on an oscilloscope like this. because you're not.

You know measuring things to you know, 0.01 percent or something like that, but it can still be an important requirement. and you want confidence in the manufacturer and in the product. And you build up confidence in these major brands. And this brings us to approved vendors.

Sometimes it's very difficult, convoluted process. I've been involved in it myself. I've had to go to companies and we have to fill out forms and we have to audit them and everything to make sure and then go through a whole certification and vetting and verification process to verify that particular vendor so that we can use their products. And it sounds silly.

But yeah, when you're high-end companies who take this seriously, if you send in a space probe to Pluto, right you want to make sure that that skill oscilloscope you did the measurements on is traceably calibrated and you're confident in it. You have your measurement confidence, your metrology is all good, and you know everything's like hunky-dory right? You don't want to take chances, so you're not going to buy the 400 oscilloscope. You're going to buy like the 1800 one for that, and you're going to get it traceably calibrated. So that's why a lot of schools and government departments and things like that like you won't be.

It won't be an option to buy a Siglin or a riger or a hand tick or a mix sig or something. Uh, like that you. You just won't be able to do it because they're not an approved vendor whereas your Tektronix is your Keysight, your Roden, Schwartz's and your Lacroix and your other high-end manufacturers, they're already approved vendors. and over time, these departments and companies have built up a lot of trust in a particular brand's products and they will want to stick with them regardless of the price.

really. Which is why the high-end manufacturers like Tektronix don't really need to go in to compete in the low-level market because they're cut. Most of their customer base is happy, uh, to pay for the trusted brand that they're happy with. I know that's not on its own.

that seems like, oh, just you know, just paying for the brand. but there's a lot of other stuff behind it. And another thing is that they almost become like a de facto standard. Tektronix is basically the name in Oscilloscopes always has been.

Really? so. They've built up trust in their products over generations, and they sort of like become a de facto standard almost. Um, in a lot of Uh departments, you might go to a lot of universities and they just have all Tektronix gear. or they just have all Keysight gear.

Or they have all Lacroix gear. or they have all Rhoden Schwarzkier or something like that. and uh, Sharia from the Uh signal path has we talked about this? I'll link in the video as as well, uh, where we he. He discussed how he actually separates his lab into brands because often in a a really high-end uh you know lab environment you will often buy into a brand solution And that leads us to the next thing.

All the accessories that uh you can get for this thing they will have all you know approved and matched accessories and they'll have a massive range of them in terms of like a pro, current probes and differential probes and all sorts of special interface weird and wonderful stuff. Once again very expensive. Just one little uh probe can cost you know, five times the price on one of these. Thank you very much but the fact is they have them.

It's not that the lower end manufacturers don't you know have a range of accessories, but generally the bigger brands will have a much bigger, wider selection of ranges, especially for you know, your more exotic test environments and for some. One of the most important reasons is that well, companies like Tektronix are pioneers in the industry and pioneers in new features and driving the high-end range of a gear. Go and try and buy your 50 gigahertz or 100 gig scope from any of your low-end manufacturers. they don't have it.

And all of this high-end research pushing the boundaries on custom asics and custom you know, really high frequency solutions that really, uh push the measurement industry. um you know at the high end all that sort of stuff costs money and that's ultimately going to filter down to like lower end uh products like this, uh 2 series. You know you don't need that 50 gigahertz oscilloscope or something, but somebody does, and they're the ones pushing the boundaries. There's only a couple of companies that do it.

Tektronix is one of them. And it's companies like Tektronix that will be uh, pushing like features down to the lower end products that your lower end manufacturers just ultimately end up copying. I know, that's not absolutely universal. You know some of the lower tier manufacturers might be doing some really nice stuff, Mixing are doing some nice stuff in the portable handheld scope market, and you know, stuff like that.

So, but you know, as a general rule, a lot of the top tier manufacturers will be pushing features into their products that are, ultimately, uh, just copied by the lower tier makers. And once again, all that R D that'll ultimately cost money, even just simple stuff. like I think this is the first scope that has a built-in Visa mount for goodness sake. Like I reckon, everyone's gotta copy that now.

And it's other small things like this removable, you know, hot swappable battery pack. Once again, you might think, oh, why bother, why can't you just plug a Usbc into and have a built-in battery and all that sort of stuff? Well, a lot of high-end customers prefer this sort of solution where they can have proper charging bays and they'll sell you the charging bay accessory Once again, very expensive at a price, but you can hotspot batteries and you know, like, really, just polished, professional solutions that the lower end manufacturers don't really want to cater to. And you'll be able to get options like 19 inch rack mount, uh accessories, uh, mobile stands and test trolleys, and all sorts of things. Once again, that's some serious coin.

But for those who need this particular bit of spit and polish for their integration into whatever environment that they're doing, your higher tier manufacturers will be happy and willing and have the forethought to actually provide these things for you at a price. Next up, and especially in the case of the Tektronix, there's probably no one better that's doing. This is consistency of user interface across their product line. When they introduced, I think the 5 series was the first one that had this new uh, you know, touch screen Gui interface form factor.

They really, you know, radically change things around how you can dock things and do all sorts of really cool and funky stuff. Once again, innovation happening there. All of that took years of research and development focus groups and and they'll you know, trial them out with customers and do all sorts of stuff right now to make sure that they've actually got this thing right and they've really thought about, uh, customer needs. Once again, it may not be what you particularly like, but you know a lot of thought and a lot of engineering and you know, effort has actually gone into it and all that costs research, dollars and ultimately filters down to the uh, price of the product.

But anyway, Um, like the five series. So anywhere from the six series down to the five, the four, the three, down to this two series uses exactly the same user interface. It's the same look and feel and any features that they add to the high end 5 or 6 series scopes, they can automatically filter down to this lower end scope. You're going to get that sort of stuff for free, and once they're standardized on their operating system and how they write the code and everything, you know There's a lot of engineering effort that's got into actually standardizing this sort of stuff across their entire product range.

And generally speaking, you're going to get a more polished firmware, uh, experience. I.e potentially less bugs. Not always the case, but you know in general. Uh, you know, a more polished, professional solution from the Tektronix or one of your high-end uh tier manufacturers.

Especially if you're doing something really, you know, obscure, like if you're working on like Pci buses, decoding things, or high-end ethernet. Uh, you know, a Dk and packet decoding or something like that, right? The really high-end stuff that they're doing right. These are professional tools that are used by professionals in the industries and that costs a lot of money. and generally they're going to put a lot of effort into those solutions.

and once again, they will filter down. all that expertise will filter down to your lower end products, and you won't really get that same sort of high level experience fielded down. uh, that you will get on. You know these small manufacturers here, who only you know someone who only makes low end scopes? Well, that's all they do.

They only make you know bang per buck low end scopes. And I do. I don't know what's Ethernet packet decoding, they don't know how to do it. And once again, in general, you're probably going to get better firmware uh, support as well.

If you do find some obscure bug somewhere, rest assured somebody at Tektronix is going to take that very seriously. They're going to look into it. They're going to put a lot of effort to solve that and give you an update for that, whereas the lower end manufacturers. oh yeah, they'll think about maybe getting around to it.

But once again, if you're a key customer, if you're like, really important to them, they're going to bend over backwards to really solve your particular product. If you bought one of their quarter of a million dollar oscilloscopes and you you're using it at uh, you know, the Cern accelerator or something like that and you've discovered some obscure bug because you're right on the boundaries of what uh, it can do and stuff like that Then you know somebody at Techtronic says that they're gonna send someone out to actually deal with your problem and that costs money. And the software that comes with the likes of Tektronix Scopes is going to be more, uh, comprehensive. It's going to have more, uh, utility in the actual industry.

Vnc network servers. They'll have data sharing capabilities across teams and you know all sorts of things. It'll be much more highly polished solution for teams that need really high-end like integrated uh solutions between team members and sharing data across the world and all that sort of jazz. So there you go.

Hopefully I I've covered a lot of points that you there that you might not have thought about. Once again, these things may not apply to you, You may not care and you go. I don't care, I'm I just want the best bang for Buck. Scope and Tektronix aren't giving it to me.

Why aren't you giving it to me? It's because they don't want to try and compete in that low end market that just takes focus away from, uh, all of the other stuff that they're trying to do in the medium to higher end market. And you know that's why none of your four top tier manufacturers are trying to compete. Sure, Tektronix have the Tbs 1000 series. Uh, Keysight here have their 1000 series.

They're low end scopes so you can get these for under a thousand dollars so you can get one of these top brands you know, relatively cheaply. But still, in terms of bang per buck, they're still not going to be there because their focus is not competing in the bang per bark market. There's already a handful of manufacturers who, are, you know, cutting each other's throat on their margins for their low end products trying to, you know, out compete each other? It's it's not sensible for the higher end manufacturers to really get into that fight. So yes, the likes of Tektronix and other manufacturers won't be competing in the bang per buck entry-level market anytime soon.

I don't think you'll probably ever see it happening, but hey, I could be surprised. But these high-end manufacturers. They have all this other stuff going on, and they're catering to markets that if you haven't worked in them, if you haven't worked in the military, if you haven't worked in government, if you haven't worked in education, you can't really, you know. imagine what a lot of these uh requirements are and you may think they're completely silly and dumb, but there's actually real reasons for them if you actually work in those industries.

If you've got your stories, um, leave them down below. I've got a few myself. So anyway, that's why Tektronix oscilloscopes cost more than other oscilloscopes. I hope you found that interesting and informative.

And if I've left uh, something out, probably have. leave it in the comments down below and discuss. Catch you next time.