Hi, let's check out Sigler's new top-of-the-line scope. It's the SDS 5000 X-series and it's one gig bandwidth. As you can see here, this one actually starts from 350 megahertz to channel all the way up to the one we have here which is fully optioned up which is the four channels and the one gig bandwidth that five gig samples per seconds. So thanks to Sigma for sending this one in, so tell us the price: Sun 2800 roughly Street Prices: two thousand, Eight Hundred and Ninety-nine Yankee dollars That prices will vary elsewhere I Might try a natal overlay graphic for the base model 350 Megahertz 2 channel version or 3500 just over 3500 US dollars for the 4 channel 350 megahertz version and I think there's a a lower difference in price in the Euros between the 2 and the 4 channel.

I Don't know why the manufacturers in these high-end bits a kit like this. Why you'd even bother really selling a 2 channel version? I Just make it for channel by default. Really? If you're gonna spring the money, if you're talking about paying like three and a half to five grand or something for a scope like this, you're gonna want to get the four channel. So yeah, I don't know why they bother.

And they do physically remove the extra two channels too, so you can't upgrade it later. Yeah, and you'll notice that it is a mixed signal scope, but the probes are actually optional extra and we'll take a look at those. You can just plug them right in the front. That's an extra $469 option for the 16 channel logic analyzer, probe, and software license and you'll notice that there's no arbitrary waveform generator output.

Well, it's a separate doodad box. It's the Sag 10 12. This is a 268 dollar option for 25 megahertz, 125 make samples per second and that just plugs into the scope and integrates in with the software inside for via the USB port. So I'm not really a fan of that solution because well, it's just another thing to sit on your bench, take up space, get lost, and someone mix it.

whatever. So yeah, I don't know why they couldn't have built it in. It's a shame and you'll notice that it's got sealants new look and feel with the silver on the control see I Really don't like those? I think they look pretty poxy? Yeah, they could do better I don't know what they're going for there I Guess you either like it or you don't and it's got a quite large 10 inch touchscreen on it and I actually quite like it. I've got my studio lights coming right on it here and it seems more than bright enough.

The display angles, you know, pretty decent. Unfortunately, if you put it up on the shelf and do look up with, it loses a little bit of its luster, but that's at my eye head height. basically. I Do have it above my head, but yeah, it's an OK screen now.

ordinarily I might grown over drop-down menus on a scope like this, but actually rather like how they've organized this, it seems very familiar and easy to use. They've got the permanent menu options along the top here, and I I think they're grouped quite nice analysis, trigger cursors and all that sort of stuff. and I think it just works quite well. So if you're going to have a touchscreen, drop-down menu, don't like that I think and I'm not sure I Particularly like how the graticule actually resizes look how it's sort of rectangular there.

We've got a 10 by 8 graticule and if you pop up the display, they actually resize it so it's still 10 by 8. So I can see why they did that, but you're sort of re changing rather than actually giving you extra information. Probably would have preferred to see the trigger in the middle and when you end like an extra two columns over here and then when you get rid of your display, you just display more info post trigger. Yeah, so it's not a particularly small scope.

it's actually quite high as you'd expect in a like a larger priced large screen display like this. The flip out feed on it are really very nice. It's not going to tip over if you push the buttons at the top, so that's pretty sweet and around the back pretty standard fare. All the requisites stuff.

we've got eggs iller e out which you can do like your trigger and things like that external trigger input so it is so you don't have to waste one of your input channels, but it would have been nice to have it on the front. but hey having on the back is fine. It's can make in and out so you can feed in external labyrinths. that's excellent.

Standard VGA out probably you know Bitman these days would like to see HDMI but Ethernet LAN interface and USB device and host as well and well it works. but me it's like the problem is is that our VGA is of course analog and the quality just isn't there that you get. The sharpness isn't there that you'd ordinarily get. we've guaranteed to get with a HDMI connection.

So I think that's a bit of a fail for such an expensive, brand new, modern scope. To have a VGA output instead of a HDMI nuts must have to do with the chipset they use inside. Haven't done a teardown of this yet, but obviously it had it included. some some sort of uh, you know, VGA analog capability I suspect and of course you don't get any extra options to display any extra info on there.

I have a higher resolution screen or whatever not you just stuck and the fan on it. Well, there is a little bit of a rumble on it, so it's probably not the highest quality fan on there, but it's certainly not offensive in the quiet lab. so you can hear it. but it's pretty good.

It's a pass and as for the interface on it: I Don't mind it at all. We've got separate dive vertical engine controls. they're all push Abul of course you can recenter and whoop and do your vernier adjustments. No problems whatsoever.

You've got your ride decodes and digital and math and reference stuff separated over here triggers up here. horizontals up here, you know. I'm a bit of a fanboy of the larger horizontal knob. You don't get it.

It's the same size as all the others Mir whatever. Anyway, there's a dedicated art Roll mode button so you can put it straight into roll. That's nice and you've got your reckless at run stop, auto setup and everything else and you can disable the touch if you don't like it but can hardly see the LEDs on there. It's one of the problems you might notice that's green if I hold it like that.

take it away like I can can't really see that with my eye I like I can't see that's green if I turn my studio lights off here. regular lab lights I can still I can't see that I cannot tell that's green but I can tell it's red so you just got to assume that if it's not red, it's green. And likewise with the auto single and normal there, you can barely see they're on and the decode ones and the wave jet, all's all the buttons there to know they need to make those brighter And that's the firmware version for those playing along at home. And this does actually seem to be a later version than the one that's currently available for download on the website.

I've got Oh 8 dot 2 and Oh 8 dot always on the website so they don't know the difference. but I think I've got the latest. You'll notice the B and C's are actually external power capable as well so they can power external probes. This is different to the 2000 X-series which only has the times 10 ring around it.

Speaking of which, they did actually include an active probe in the box, but this is not standard. This is a $1,000 option. It's a one gig, one point, two puffs. Very nice active FET probe.

Be careful you don't exceed the maximum import. You can ruin your probe and that's very nice. I Won't test active var pros, but it comes with all the requisite bits and all the tiny little doodad adapters that you need to get an active pro. But after you do a separate video on active probes I think I've got a I've got another two different types I can maybe compare three different probes.

Hmm, but anyway, you can see how that I gets all its power via these pogo pins here on there. Let's see if it automatically detects on Channel 4 here. Probe detected channel 4 vertical scale at limit 1 mega ohm, it's it's detected it and times 10 I Would have liked to have actually seen it say active probe there though just because I could just give me the warm fuzzy and then if you try and choose 50 ohm, it's still there. But of course you can't do it because it's got the active probe so it knows so it's not that dumb.

And yeah, you can't do the amps or whatever and the probe. everything else is all right. There we go. It does tell us the probe time so it does know what is actually connected.

It even pulls the serial number over. I've got number eight Beauty I guess I Haven't sold many yet and these are the probes you get with it. Five hundred men get banned with one, so of course you can't get one gig. Passive probes up.

That's our really, really difficult there end compensated as opposed to probe compensated once at times ten only, which is what you expect and that looks and feels actually quite nice. Hmm, and it counts with the BNC adapter. I Find those really handy. That's very nice and you're reckless at easy hook, extra probe tip and the high end and your low inductance, high ductus, low inductance grounding point.

And given that it is available in a a 250 mega and a 500 big version. but this scope actually starts at 350 Meg so they wouldn't give you 250 Meg probes. They give you the 500 Meg probes with all the scopes. No workers now of course.

One of the things with the touchscreen is that it supports gesture controls so you can just drag it horizontal like that. You can change your scale. Supposed to be able to change the scale. What Channel one selected What? There's a bone.

It's changing the other ones. What? It's changing. Channel 2. It's not obvious which one you've got selected? Well, There we go.

So it's working now. But what The Mm? Anyway, it's abide by default. It sort of supports the the vernier like that so it doesn't just jump. It would be nice if you like swiped up or swiped down like that to sort of like change the vertical range rather than just the the pinch and zoom.

of course that's it's gone back to. It's certainly not obvious which channel is selected for thee and if you turn on a Channel 4. Okay, so better with it'd be nicer if they really put a nice big highlight around there. If you're gonna adjust things, that would be nice.

Hmm, there we go. I Selected I Accidentally selected that even though I wasn't meaning to. So up there we go. No note.

So I can't select the the yellow trace, can't select the vertical there and then no. look look I swear this is a buddy. It's Channel One selected up there. Okay, and it's moving.

Channel three. Yeah, that's that's just wrong. Anyway, watch this. One of the first things I found when playing around with this scope.

Okay, watch the time base down here. 500 microseconds per division. Okay I can pinch and zoom. There we go.

Let's make it faster. Watch what happens when it gets right down to 100 nano, it can get down to Pico 200 Pico and it jumps back up. It folds back up to the slowest time base of 1ke per second. So 1000 seconds per division? That's just nuts.

but it should not do that. And of course the horizontal control doesn't do that. If you go all the way with LBJ riding like that, it stops at 200 path seconds which is what it should. So I yeah, that's a that's a bug.

Don't don't like that door. There is no auto roll function as you go up either. Some people like that, some people don't like it. but of course there's the big-ass roll button up there.

You can just turn that on and you're in like Flynn tell you. One thing I don't like is that when you pinch and zoom like that. as I said, you go into the Vernier so you go into the fine Six forward and like now we're 640 millivolts per division and it actually changes your knob to the Vernier as well. so by default it and I think the knob should order unless you've pushed it to put it into vernier mode, it should override the vernier on the screen.

That's my personal opinion. Let me know what you think. Anyway, the scope is very responsive, no workers there. and one thing is if you turn the control like that, it will actually stop while it's being turned.

It will actually stop All channels display updating, but that's not uncommon on some scopes. Some do it, some does some do it worse than others, but yeah, this one. just be aware of that. One of the things like if I spin the nod the same amount each time.

sometimes it just doesn't go by the same amount you saw it, just like sort of skip there and miss it so it doesn't feel like like it feels like it's like missing some encoder readings on the knob or something. Something to do with the software actually decoding. That's just a little bit a little bit annoyance to something. I Noticed it's not a showstopper by any stretch and if you actually go into the search option up here, then you go in.

It's got some quite powerful while search capabilities, but it's um, stopped it stopped updating I Don't necessarily like that. Yeah, just turning search on or off doesn't do it. but if you go into one key navigate down here then it automatically stops. It isn't supposed to.

Hmm. going to display persistence again. You can't see the green LED there dotson vectors as per normal, but it's also got a color grading display for those color grading display fanboys knock yourself out There we go. Clear sweeps.

There we go. And should it or not clear those sweeps when you change the time base, that's a question for the ages. You can change your intensity in your by your colors in your color graded display as well. And if you've got color grade turned off then that'll be your intensity.

and I plugged in the AWG you just detected that. Here's our way of Gen menu. you can switch that on and then we've got Sine Square ramp pulse noise DC and does it have any special? Arby's yet Stair up door? There you go. Yeah, it's got a bunch of them.

Oh there we go. Yep. Engine Cardiac agent I Guess it's the engine. Anyway, it's tree Go tree go.

You've got to have your trio types. sounds very rosy western suburbs tree go. but unfortunately I Select my sign type I Don't see any modulation? Where's the modulation? Where's wally? Nope. Wow.

You pay a couple hundred bucks for your arm Jen and you don't get modulation? Yeah, I Wanted to use that to show you the 256 color for 256 shades or whatever intensity greater display. but I can't do my modulation I cant modulate. That's hopeless. Well let's try out their velocity control here.

Yeah, it only does it like you can't even set the interval for that. Actually, no like I much prefer. like the keysight one that you could really go right down. That's not a smart vernier at all, but it you know it does.

The joy it doesn't actually have velocity doesn't seem to have velocity control really. No, that's a bit me. So if you want to enter a precise frequency of course you know 3.14159 megahertz? Yeah, we go 3.14 It is that the is that the best resolution? where God Really two decimal places? That's hopeless. And the other thing here you might notice that my display is is stopped.

Okay, but my auto we're in auto mode and we rerun mode up here. It should be updating, but it's not. Let me press clear sweeps. Does that what I have to do to get it back into business? Okay, I don't like this.

It's it's the intensity adjust knob. You would think you'd be able to use that to adjust the intensity. Press it. You'd think it would go to intensity mode, but it doesn't.

You've actually got to go into the display, persistence menu and then intensity before you can select that. Don't don't like that at all. That's terrible material. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not as good as a persistence display as we've seen on cichlid scopes before.

I'm using my standard one megahertz carrier with one kilohertz 100% modulation and really I it's kind of there, but it's just not the same. Sure, it seemed better than signaling. Other than that from Siglent before, haven't we? Nope. I wasn't imagining things.

Is there 1,000 X-series And look at this beautiful intensity graded display? Look, it's fantastic. Exactly what you'd expect. And it's got the same super phosphorous Illus Cope SPO technology. So why isn't it the same to have a radically different like that on their top-end oscilloscope using the same SPO Super Phosphor technology? That's just nuts.

Uh, that isn't nearly as good. And of course, if you turn on the color grading. oh, you've got to get the intensity thing. By the way, the 1000x does the same silly thing with the intensity graded knob.

That's great if you like your color, but not there's something something going on there. Is that a function of the memory depth? We're using? 12 point 5 mega memory depth? No. shouldn't matter up there. We go there, we go.

Maybe if we're 1.25 C we can't get back to our intensity. That's so frustrating. It's still not. It's still not as good like in this flickering on there like I'm not sure if you're picking that up on camera, but like it's just not as good as the 1000 X-series Why? Okay, now let's just compare the update rate.

Now let's just compare it to the Keysight 3000 series. What I've got here, you can see intermittently there is popping up a very rare sort of runt pulse there. It's like a missing pulse 50 nanoseconds per division. You can see that pop up, you know, and maybe a couple of times a second.

Maybe not. It depends. It's just like randomly infrequent turn persistence mode on there we go. It pops up and it does it pretty quickly.

You can clear it pops up. Kayo. Turn persistence on here, reset it and it's ain't popping up yet. Now this is same time base 15 nanoseconds per division.

The 5000 X-series has a nominal maximum update rate of up. There we go, we got one, and that hundred and ten thousand is actually less than the lower 2000 X-series which has a maximum of 140 K wave for my base per second. Bingo, There we go, we got one. But yeah, you can see the fairly dramatic Oh, did we get another one there? Yeah, you can see the update rate difference.

It's ten to one and it kind of bears that out in the updating, but is capturing it. And as you'd expect on an advanced scope, it has lots of advanced triggering that capabilities. so we'll try out a few of those, including zone triggering which is great so let's see what we can get. Okay, so what I've got is a sine wave here with little pulses popping up.

Here there's actually more than what's showing here. It's an update rate thing so we're gonna have a look at the trigger and we're gonna do zone triggering, which should allow us to draw a little box I'm gonna sorry you won't be able to see it. You will be able to see that now. Okay, just above the sine wave there so won't trigger on that and we'll go.

Must intersect Zone 1 Zone 2 must intersect. They've actually copied key side here like practically completely and there we go. So if I go to single-shot capture, it should sit there and wait until we get a pulse. Bingo! And we're in like that.

And there's our little glitch which we captured with our zone triggering so that's very cool. That seems to work fine. but as I said update rate not as fast to say the key Sider that's white. Maximum 1 million.

This is like almost 10 times less than that. so these glitches don't show up as frequently as they actually should. Ok so what I've got now is a signal with a little runt pulse in there which your free single-shot capture that. It's a bit rarer than it looks.

if we keep single-shot capturing that we may not get it of course. but if we run it, you can see that these these runt pulses in there. So let's try the run trigger capability. So trigger menu it's not a white like why not have like met several of the different types in here I don't like in the drop-down menu you've got zone Okay, auto single normal.

maybe have a few more perhaps I don't know me so let's try our run. What? Yeah, that's still showing up. Our zone trigger. Why? I've turned off zone triggering is another bike.

You can change your limit range there, but the upper value is like nanoseconds. Why nanosecond? Why is it time? Why isn't it voltage? I Want to trigger on my little exactly as it shows in the setup menu here. If you go in there, look, it shows the little lines between the things there. So why are we setting up time instead of like voltage? That's what it shows.

That's what it implies. There runt pulse as in not a runt pulse in time, but a runt pulse in voltage. Oh, it doesn't go high enough because of. There could be some bus conflict or something like that.

and in your circuit that you're trying to debug or some shorted, you know, something like that and the phone is just isn't get in there. So what? The AHA figured it out. It didn't disable this as a qualifier, it's always on, which is interesting. That's not how the keysight one operates anyway.

A limit range is less than equal to and we use a level control here where actually we'll have to trigger levels. You can actually see one up there. There's one of them I won't touch that. Can we get rid of that? There we go.

We've got one trigger level there and we can see that there's a runt pulse in there. by the way, this doesn't look nearly as good as the keysight one. And bingo, we've lowered the other trigger level to below that and it's triggered off the runt pulse. So yeah, it works.

There we go. We're triggered nicely off our runt pulse and then we can, of course, single-shot capture that every time. and we'll capture that run every time. So that works.

No worries. But why is that zone still there? Oh don't I Still got sone triggering on their turn zone triggering off. Let's try that. Then we go.

All right now. we're in now. It's triggering beautifully off that run pulse there. and if we adjust our trigger level, that's all over the shop.

But there you go. it just locks in. so that works. a treat.

And the cursors work exactly as you'd expect them to, although they're the same color as Channel 1, so I'm yeah, that's a bit. it's a little bit annoying. I would have chosen the color that doesn't match any of the inputs and very obviously we have a hardware frequency counter up here because that isn't changing when I zoom in or zoom right out. And if we have a look, it'll be the 73 kilohertz period between there.

Actually, nope, it's Eleven Point Eight kilohertz, so don't know where it's getting its 73 kilohertz from. but interesting where the keysight is exactly the same. So okay, so let's check out the measurement capability of this thing. And of course you can.

It automatically switches it on. You can get your different sources of course. Actually I was gonna say where's the Math Art sauce? Yeah, it's in there Nice. All the reference as well.

The reference waveform for different reference waveforms nice, haven't tried those out yet. Beautiful. And the types vertical that looks pretty comprehensive. doesn't it level measured a trigger position? It's like we got our pre shoot.

they're ROV not sure why they call it AB It should be like just overshoot following the rising edge. Okay, fair enough. And then there's the pre shoot before the falling edge, etc. so it's all there.

You can't get any additional help by the looks of it over and above what's here. So that would have been nice. but like when you're talking about a one gig bandwidth scope like this. like you should know.

If you own this, you should know what you're doing so you know it should be self-explanatory Oh, and you'll see how it's actually added them down here like this. The updating is really fast I like that and you can just get rid of them like that and they're all Gonski It looks like you can get up to I know it's gonna I thought those were the boxes for them but they're not. they're the Hat that's the graticule behind there. Anyway, what I want is the rise time.

There we go 440 pika seconds because what I'm measuring here is the rise time from my Leo. Bodnar 40 Pika Second rise Time Pulse generator. You've seen this in the mailbag before. I'll link it in down below if you haven't seen it anyway.

generates a nice are 40 nano second pulse that we can just try out and test the input. And the good thing of course is that you can get statistics. This is what you'd expect on a scope of this class. and there we go.

It's just dust and started and we can actually get a histogram. Will it? pull it? You are puts it under there. Why doesn't it like use all the space in there? That's a bit. How are you doing? No wait.

hang on. hold onto your hat if you click that. look at this. can we get we can drag that and it's transparent.

To check it out, we get a nice little lower window there. It's only putting them into those bins. That's the red. Yeah, that's the best resolution you can get.

Of course you'll get finer resolution than that depending on upon the particular sample rate that you're adding, the amount of data that you've got in this particular case, we're right down at the bleeding edge of the time base. So, but yeah, look, that's really quite neat and we can. We can reset our stats on that and it'll grow that. That's nice.

I Like that. You can't like dock these windows anywhere. They're not Like dockable or anything like that, so you've got to like drag them around manually. Yeah, still.

it's pretty neat. Does the histogram slow that down at all? No, doesn't seem to. Anyway, you can see that we get the extra resolution on there when we get the mean because it's able to like, you know, average that out. So mid max standard deviation: 9.5 pica seconds.

Nice. I'm liking that. Does that reset? If I change the time base? Yes, it does. you'd expect that.

And of course, if you take the stand formula, the bandwidth is 0.35 on the rise time the 10 to 90 percent rise time. but actually it should show the little markers on there I Think if it's doing the rise time, that actually should at least be optional to show that I think Anyway, the response is quite nice, and if you want to actually see the response with either the 50 Ohm or the 1 Meg input, that's actually quite good because it's actually with the 50 ohm, it's actually double terminated there because I've actually got an inline 50 ohm terminated just so that I can get the exact same termination on different scopes. But anyway, Houston, we have a problem and I know a lot of this. Reviewers just been like finding little issues with this scope, but that's every time.

Like I try something that I like. This seems to be an issue, right? Ok, I'm putting down our 10 megahertz signal. By the way, it's 10 Meg up there. That's the hard way.

Frequency counters working in absolute treat. Okay, watch this. I've only got channel one on, right? I've got 1 megaohm input impedance. Turn on Channel 2.

The waveform goes the buggery. enabling that second input is changing the signal integrity. You'll notice that it's not. It's not really the jitter, it's It's not a problem in there.

it's actually changing that, the fidelity. and does that change with 50 ohm? Nope. Even for those who might think aha, look Dave its power from the USB here. Okay, well let me take this over.

I'm plugging it into my keysight scope now. and same problem, nothing doing there. And if I plug it into an isolated battery bank does exactly the same thing. Okay, here's the keysight scope.

The response is different, but this is only a 500 mega bandwidth. You got to remember that. So let's turn the other channels on and not a sausage. Not a sausage of a difference.

All channels on. Not exactly what you'd expect. Doesn't affect it at all. Okay, this is Rygel's top-of-the-line MSO 7000 series scope.

Once again, it's only 500 Meg's so it doesn't quite. It's not in the same performance class there, but that's channel 1, only on as channel 2. it's channel 3. that's channel 4.

Now it's fine, no difference, and the only other one gig bandwidth scope I've got in the lab. Here is the old Tektronix Mdo 3000 series which I like literally today I think the fourth of July has just been replaced by the new series 3m do scope but I believe it just has a bigger screen. It's exactly the same hardware inside and everything else, but it's just repackaged with the new series GUI and all that sort of jazz. Anyway, you can see the really slow update rate of the MD Oh, it's like it's just like slow as a wet week.

Anyway, there we go. this Channel 1 only Channel 2 channel. Oh hello the M do. It seems to do it as well.

Oh, all right. So clearly what this is is the sample rate interpolation because at 2.5 gig samples per second, we're trying to measure that rise time. Okay, so we've got dots. Let's okay.

Wow we have two single shot capture that to see that we haven't got many dots in there. Okay, there's all our little Dottie's There's all our samples and that's a 2.5 gig samples per second. So if we turn off the extra channel which will give us five, you notice that it didn't change. It only changes when you do the new sample.

Now we've got double the amount of dots. so it's that aggressive sign X on X interpolation that's really causing us to come. a guts are there being. You can see that if we're in dot mode, everything's fine so that just goes away.

The problem: I've got all four channels on now and your problem goes away. So there's yeah. there's your aggressive turn on vectors which is actually sign X on X and you get all that nasty business. But yeah, the other scopes aren't nearly as aggressive.

You saw that the Tektronix kind of sort of does it. But yeah, the keysight doesn't and the wry goal doesn't add a similar sort of sample rate. So yeah, single it that aggressive sign X on X. It's not great.

All right. let's have a look at the noise floor here. I've got an unterminated input 1 megohm I've done a standardize on 1 millivolt per division I've got the full bandwidth here and I say that in quote marks because it might have one gig up here on the banner. but when you pay all that money, unfortunately, anything under according to the manual 2.4 5 millivolts per division I Don't know why that number why that oddball number but anything less than that then you only get 200 megahertz bandwidth.

So add down at 1 millivolt or 500 millivolts which this thing will action 500 micro volts which this thing does go to, it does have at room 500 micro volt ranger it seems to then you only get there 200 megahertz bandwidth. You don't get anymore. You pay the like the 500 meg or the 1 gig version. Anyway, this is actually very low.

Look at the Rms. we're talking just unlike let's round it to 90 micro volts their RMS noise so that's pretty good. Peak to peak about 550 micro volts there. and if we compare that to the Road and Schwartzie over here, then let's have a look.

Once again, this is all the same. I've got one microsecond per division I've got one Meg point memory on both of them. so same time base, same memory depth and this is a 350 Meg scope. So this one actually does have a larger bandwidth than the siglent.

Even though the sequence of one gig scope at 1 millivolt per division, we're looking at mean of 340 micro volts RMS so a lot higher and you'll notice the waveform count. Have a look I Started these at exactly the same time actually. so wave count there and 2000 here it's up to 34,000 there already so you can see at the same memory depth at the same time, base the road and Schwartz is just killing it in terms of getting and it's not necessarily waveform update, but the number of calculations that it's able to do is heck of a lot quicker that De Sica. That's not particularly slow on the siglent, but the Rohde Schwarz just happens to be much quicker.

and I can actually reset those again. Here Here we go. Boom boom Whoop! There we go and you'll just see the road and Schwartz count up much quicker. There we go - Really? in a thousand? haven't even hit a hundred here, so it's good.

Ten times quicker on its wave count analysis Now of course because the logic analyzer, probe and license on this is quite expensive. Can we do the serial decode in without the logic analyzer? Can we use the analog channels here? Well, let's turn on our decode here and bus decode. It's got how many different decoders? It's got two different decoders and protocols. Standard: you do get: I Squared C SPI you are standard but Candalyn and Flex, Ray and I2s they're all our separate priced options, but at least you do get the main ones.

Standard I Believe I Just noticed something here on the menu. There's like if you go in here and say choose signal, where's the back, Where's the menu back button I Don't like get it you can just get rid of it like that. but yeah, I don't we have to go back to there. Press the button again Me: don't like that.

Anyway, let's choose Spy and then go in and check our signals and the three lines here. we should be out. Yep, we can choose our analog channels. Nice.

And if we choose turned digital on, do we get our digital decodes on our digital channels? We should. That's that's the theory anyway. Clock AHA Digital channels There you go. Sweet! So yes, there is no need to buy the expensive digital logic probe and license for that if you just want to do your basics serial decoding, you can do it on your analog channels.

But of course you lose your valuable analog channels. But me, that's a trade off with all scopes in that regard. and it does actually have a chip select timeout on here. which is important because if you don't have that, then you have to have the chip select on the extra channel.

So this just allows you to do it based on a software timeout and then you don't have to sacrifice another analog. Channel Nice. And I've captured some data here and with clock and data spi and you can see that the when you select this threshold for the clock, you can actually type in values. or why can't they just get rid of that? If you should disappear anyway, you can see even though it's stopped, it will still decode or it should.

Yep, it didn't hit decodes on the save data. so that's kind of nice as you move the threshold. All right. So I've captured some SPI data there with a chip select in there.

it is siglent and it's just got some random data at the end of that I Believe that's it that's actually correct. and if we go right out like this for example, and we single-shot capture that, we should still be able to zoom in there and it should still use all of the memory. Let's have a look. Yep, it's still there it's still good.

unfortunately. I Don't think we're going to be able to do any search on that. so navigate search, event, event, number. No, that's got nothing to do with the serial decoding.

So unfortunately I don't think we can. Actually, we can do it. We've got a Lister Of course we can turn on a Lister decode one. There it is so we can see it pop up there.

but I don't think that we can search for that. That's a bit of a bummer. and I Don't think we can change the size the display of that either. But of course we've got our different types.

We can format that in hex, decimal, and binary thank you very much. but it truncates. It shows a little red at the end of that. If it actually truncates that, such shows you.

that's not the full full deal there. so you can stock I Just sort of see it like that. It doesn't centre though. I think it should.

you know centre all these things I think that's a little bit how you're doing I'd like to see it in the middle. Okay. I'm starting to get really infuriated that there's no back button here for the display. Ah, it's killing me.

but check this out. If you're going to bus config, there's a return option on that menu. Like what the this is like. Completely inconsistent.

UI Unbelievable. Alright, let's check out the FFT functionality of this thing because it's supposed to have 2 Meg point FFT which is pretty much better than almost anything else on the market. I Think in terms of number of points, but unfortunately like it's F50 is just rudimentary math. So like we go into the math menu and we get like the function of course you can get up or you Rick opens there we go.

Thank you! Okay so we've got all our different types. FFT is just one of our math types and the window types Blackman Von Hand Ham in all the rest so we're going to stick to Blackman We've got a average as well so we can actually pull out some what that's going to take. while you can see, the updating rate of that is really slow. Anyway, it is and it's got max hold as well which is handy and you can see that the current value there tells you the number of points of the FFT.

So it is currently running almost two point, one mega fifty and you can see the records that updating is a bit slow there. What? I've actually got here is a one megahertz carrier FM modulated 50 kilohertz with 500 Hertz deviation so that we can actually turn our cursors on there. I Don't like that the cursors are the same color as the has the actual waveform. That's a bit annoying Anyway, when see our 50 kilohertz deviation there and of course the source for the cursors, you can just call up, choose any of your channels or in this case the math function which happens to be FFT at the moment and we can have split-screen like this.

or we can have display mode, our fullscreen or exclusive. Let's go What? Oh there we go, that just overlays on the full screen. Okay, so you got to choose exclusive if you just want your FFT There you go. You can see all the detail in there.

That's what you get from you too. Meg points. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all you get because it uses your traditional like scope math functions. If yeah, okay, you can set your center frequency, you can set your Hertz per division, but you can't set your resolution, band width or anything like that so you know it doesn't really operate like your more traditional spectrum analyzer.

if you compare that well. glarey screen with the execs. terrible isn't it mirror with the exact same signal on the road. and Schwartz here you can see that we've actually got we can set, start and stop Center our span our resolution bandwidth and we can just go in there and just modify those to our hearts content.

So this will I think the road and Schwartz's 64k points go I Can't remember precisely. but anyway, and we're not even in that high resolution acquisition mode there. For example, we can go into high resolution mode and war. Look at that Beautiful.

Let's try that on the Sieglin. Actually give that a bell. The choir acquisition ear is. let's go our extended resolution.

Whoa. Whoa. All right there it is. There it is.

Can you enhance our number of bits? Let's go all the way with LBJ. Let's get an extra three bits of resolution there and not a dramatic improvement. Is it unlike the road and Schwarz But as I said like unfortunately, that's kind of it because it doesn't really have like proper spectrum analyzer capability. can't go in there and track like we can.

As I said like we can get cursors for example. and but you know, really it's like we can't go in there and like it. Mark tops and get the reference level and stuff like that. And yeah, it's just it's regular.

FFT mode. What do you expect? It works. It's two midpoints, so if you want a stunning number of points, this thing has it. But it's about it right? Let's see how long it takes to start up, wait until we get to zero there, and go like relays.

clicking, realize clicking furiously. So it's way past the 30-second mark. Nice has come in into the annoying territory. Yep, let's call it no, no, not yet and it's not yet up.

No. I think it is. Oh, there we go. Nope.

Probe detected Channel three there are 45 to 50 seconds boot up time. That's annoying for an everyday you scope check. They said I Found this option in the utilities menu. power online I am assuming that means automatically power up when you plug in the mains because this has got a soft start power button under that push button.

Rubbish. If so, that's kind of cool. Now, what I'm doing now is feeding the auxiliary output of this which is the trigger pulse over to the world. It's effectively the update rate basically over to our scope over here and we can actually see what we'll be able to see how fast it's updating.

Now this is interesting. so let's let's actually run this. You can see that there are periodic gaps in here. okay, but you know I might have to zoom out here.

But when I say let's do the level control here. you can see when I move the level control, it just stops capturing and that's a trigger out. Which means it's not actually capturing the data. It's not like the screen is freezing or anything like that, which might be okay as long as it's capturing data in the background.

And and yeah, looking for triggers and stuff like that. And when you turn that level control if I turn that slowly like that, it's it's doing bugger-all it's just ain't up dating scopes, just stopping. And let's try the vertical control for example. and it does the same on the vertical control.

So if I so if I can just manually slowly moving that like that you can see. yep it just ain't updating. Okay so there our update rates only 2.4 K So let's look for a sweet spot. If you see if we adjust the horizontal here, you'll see that our update rate increases and this is the same for most all scopes.

Really, they're gonna have an optimized update rate based on the sample rate and the memory depth. So let's yeah, that's not very and ain't quick at all. So even at maximum time base there, if we single-shot capture that set to trace there, we're looking at 11 kilohertz or 11,000 our waveform updates per second. Basically, oops, I still had a res on there so I can't affect that.

Lets memory Depth: let's go right down. Minimum 256 K looks like 50 hundred 100 nanoseconds per division. Above that she starts to change, but below that that's the best. I Can get acquisition mode fast or low acquisition mode Vast acquisition mode.

There's a difference. You can definitely see the update rate difference there. Interpolation: Does that add anything? Nope, it doesn't. You can see in there this significant jitter in the time period there so that that would have to do with that.

What the scope needing to do stuff. But yeah, that's a it's quite a large discrepancy isn't it? Not sure that means anything, just find it interesting. And I Really like this. If you set your trigger well, set your trigger hold-off here and you adjust your trigger hold-off you can actually see the output width changing over there.

So that's interesting. Yeah, I Don't like the velocity control on the Cygwin, it's just not very intelligent. Set that width of that hold off. That's interesting, isn't it? I Love that you can go into your deep scope architecture.

Theory Years is terrific. Anyway, the best: I Seem to be able to get out of this with a standard one. Makes square wave going in, nothing else turned on and we're looking at. you know, twenty three and a half thousand waveform updates per second.

Not terrific. It doesn't meet specs I don't know what's going on now. Okay, so we're at a maximum update rate of about Twenty Three Kilohertz here. and let's I've only got the one channel.

Look what happens if I turn turn on Channel two. Boom, It's dropped right down. We're talking about just a one point six, eight, one point seven Kilohertz from Twenty three. So if I disable that single-shot capture that set to trace.

There it is. Twenty One Point Six Kilohertz. So huge difference just churning on Channel two. That is remarkable.

I'm gonna have to like check other scopes now if I turn on Channel three, it doesn't do it. It is going with that sample rate as well. So five gig samples, a second, two and a half D examples per second and Boom it drops. So turn on Channel three.

We're still at five gig samples per second so it's sampling rate correlated. Just realized if you go into the trigger setup menu here and then you go into your type, zone triggering is not one of them. like why it wouldn't be there I don't know, you have to select it from up there. That's just it.

It's not a consistent thing I don't know what the deal is. And another example of this: if we go to the acquire menu here, acquisition like there's no option for the sequence mode. The segmented memory mode. you have to actually go up to acquire up here and then get your sequence.

So why they've like split these I did I Don't get it, it's not consistent. Anyway, we're going to go into sequence mode. What I'm going to do is I'm gonna try to set up a own trigger here so that you can see me every every time. If I actually turn off zone triggering, it's annoying.

see I can't get to my zone trigger there. If I actually turn off the zone triggering, you'll see that that runt pulse is only there some of the time. So I thought I'd just capture that. but if I turn zone triggering on here, you'll capture that every signal time.

and I just want to capture with with zone triggering into segments of memory. so function cannot be used in zone triggering mode. Why? It's exactly what I wanted to use it for cuz I wanted to trigger off an infrequent glitch. yet like maximize my memory depth in there I Know that it's not the best example, but I wanted to do that because anyway, what segmented memory is good for is that if you've got lots of data like that.

of course with a deep memory scope, we can capture like long sequences like this because this has got a massive amount of memory and one of the largest on the market at this sort of price point and market point 250 Meg points. So we can do that and we can then and go and zoom in and examine that data, but we're then wasting most of our memory just capturing nothing here. All this all this memories just wasted. So this is what Segments and Memory Mode does.

It allows you to get the waveform like that and then capture just like segments of memory like that and then you can scroll through them later but you can't do it in sideways zone triggering. Unbelievable. And if you just want to see how much siglent, copycat keysight in everything they do I mean they have a siglent, have made products that are absolute identical, almost cloned copies. from the look, feel, button layout, and all the menu operations and everything else.

they did that with one of their multimeters. Anyway, let's um, if look, have a look at the zone triggering here and if we look at the menu, zone intersect, let's get the same over here: zone one that they've added two zones exactly like keysight and well, they've got a histogram. They're adding that to key side of that I Don't know. Anyways, you can add annotation for the keysight one.

no annotation on the siglent. Well, that's actually interesting. You see how it's got zone one trigger and then it's actually a histogram zone. So that's like that's quite fascinating, isn't it? Ah, need to look into that more.

That's pretty neat. Anyway, if you're curious, will the Keysight do the segment and memory with the zone triggering? And yep, you betcha it does. There we go. We just got our ten segments there with the zone triggering.

So I don't know that could be. Is that an architecture thing inside the siglent? Is it purely a software limitation? But they're obviously detecting it and they're deliberately telling you're not sorry, can't do it. But anyway, here in a keysight can see and that's why. like the four main points, memory of the keysight isn't necessarily a huge limitation in practice, because in this particular mode, we can enable zone triggering and we can go in there and get full resolution data like on these individual packets and then we just use the navigate menu to just scroll through.

We've captured ten of these segments. They they look identical, but trust me, they could change. and if I turned off triggering, you'll actually probably see that. Hang on.

Okay, so I Single-shot capture that again. And in this case, yeah, none of our none of our segments have captured a runt pulse. I'm gonna have to go up. You have to increase my number of segments.

I Don't know. Let's just go 30 there. So we'll capture 30 segments, have a look through there to see if there's Oh, there we go. We got one.

We got one. You can see how that's just magically popped up there like that. And of course we can do exactly the same thing on the siglent. but we can't do it with the zone triggering.

Oh um, is this a bug? look I Just turned our same trigger and we've got this Blue. What's this blue line and trace down here I don't have the other channels turned on so what like I don't know what did blue? It's a blue Tracy bit left it. Where did that come from? Anyway, we can't go into sequence mode here. We can set our number of sequence segments.

There we go. Let's have like 30 like we had on the key site. There sequence acquisition switch on and oh oh, is that the histogram? Oh no. Ok, that is that Blue got something to do with that histogram zone.

Anyway, Single shot capture that acquired. Yes, there we go. We acquired our 30 and now we can navigate. You'll notice that the buttons are exactly the same as on the key site.

the left, right and stop and the navigate buttons. They've just, you know, copied the user interface basically and there's nothing inherently wrong. Oh no, that that's scrolling by default. Well, that's annoying.

There's absolutely no reason why you would want to scroll through a screen like that when there's no more data to be displayed. I It should be smart enough to know that I don't I didn't get that. Okay, so we hit our navigate button. time, History by default.

it goes to time I Know that should go to history frame but help. hello Sorry, it might have to sample that again. What? Why can't I choose history frame as my type like an Oni Cheers time. What the for the life of me I Cannot get rid of this histogram zone thing.

it's just not there. Oh I tried desperately hitting the auto setup button I went into you know, monkey mode and just hit that and I did I Still can't get it? Oh okay. I've got some automated scrolling thing happening here. Like with persistence.

You can see it moving across. there. you'll see it all. You see how history frame a histogram frame or whatever coming across.

and I don't know what the advantage of that histogram type scrolling display is. Bueller Bueller Aha. Apparently you can't select it here. Oh I RTFM Die.

Read the freaking manual and it said hit the history button on the front panel. Well, there is no history button. Nope. Or you can go into analysis history and apparently that then yes and then we're in history mode and then this gives us our frames.

What? 8,000 I thought Oh, hang on now I Have restarted the scope. It restarted all the various modes but did it What? Hang on Secrets No 30 30 Okay, right. watch this. Okay Single-shot CAPTCHA Okay Acquisition mode on single-shot capture sequence.

we've captured our 30. We should be able to go into analysis and then History 30. Thank you I Don't know why it had 8000 before. That's just ridiculous.

and now no. Oh yes, we can know What We can't even jump through. You can't even jump one by one. Are you kidding me? You've got to use the you could have used it.

You got to select that and and that. No. Come on. this is what the buttons are there for.

That Keysight had this figured out. he just it automatically goes into that history mode. That's what you want with segmented memory. You want to look at your separate segments as the first thing keysight have thought about.

That siglent haven't They haven't thought about how people are going to use this. How they use sequence mode I Mean it's in there. but then you've got to go into analysis and history like know as soon as you capture those sequences, you should just be able to press these buttons and it. And it does the business.

If you got a copy key sight on things, copy the usability as well. It's there for a reason. Anyway, we can turn on a list there. We've got various times, acquisition times, and and stuff like that.

So you know segment of memory works, but it doesn't work with zone triggering. Zone trigger is such a powerful thing these days, especially for doing exactly what you'd need segment and memory for which is defined. You know these are like weirdo little pulses and stuff like that. That's what you're gonna find.

But anyway, I Still haven't figured out how to get rid of that I Can no idea. Oh, look other things that's got. Its got a DVM source channel DC Main say can that's alright from multimeter frequency Okay, it's got auto range in bar graph. you can turn on a histogram.

Oh look at that. look at that. a DC histogram. That's pretty.

That's nice. There we go. It's counting up really slow. it's not taking many readings per second.

eight, nine, ten. but that that's alright. Geez, don't mind that trend and it's got a trend chart. Wow, that's neat.

Wow I Don't think any other scope with DVM function has a trend chart, do they? That's pretty impressive. I Like that. and granted it's only an eight bit. ADC You know it's not like it.

It's not like a real multimeter, but geez that, that's pretty. That's pretty neat. I'm gonna assume that it. can do that in the background.

No, it resets it. Now that's a bit of a shame that it can't just do that in the background it every it's it's tied to your acquisition and triggering system. That's a real shame. If it was like an independent voltmeter that operated entirely independently, then that'd be really cool.

So anyway, I've got a quote. Call it quits I Spend enough time on this reviewing this thing. There is just countless stuff in here like I can do you know, five or ten like Mars testing and I haven't even used the logic analyzers I haven't used any other remote programming or network capabilities. Any of you know some more of the advanced functions and stuff and there's just countless things I mean this.

This is like being an hour long or whatever, and this just countless things to test. Anyway, if you want me to quickly test something desperately I can't actually do that and just whack a video on the second channel. So I think that's definitely the way to do it. So anyway, I hope you were if you're still with me I hope you I found that interesting and well, it is.

What do I Think Well, it's It's rough around the edges, but it is the cheapest one gig scope you can get on the market. Brand new a lot of people point out I've done that. I Did that scope review comparison? A lot of people point out ROI Go Do have a one gig scope and it is this old 6000 series that's like how old is that? five or six years old? At least it's really old now. So yeah, I'm not sure about the prices on that one compared to this, but this is by far if you want a brand new out of the box one gig bandwidth scope.

this thing cannot be beat. There's simply no other choice. You would have to go for the used second-hand refurbished market if you wanted something cheaper. But yeah, it needs a bit more spitting.

Polish Descent Sieglin are adding features to this since I did that review comparison spreadsheet they have responded and said oh yes, we plan on adding the bode plot, our functionality to the wave gen and stuff like that. So and other features that I meant that weren't that technically aren't in there now so they did. He plan on adding all these things and I'd rather trust Siglent to fix and update us firmware and add features and stuff like that. The Rygar I go of like really miss the boat I were they ever on the boat but I I think Siglent have it up on Rygel in that regard in key boom like adding features and firmware and and stuff like that and you know this is a pretty serious scope and it's got a ton of features, but as you saw you know some like little limitations in there, like just simple ones that I found so in triggering and there seems to be like a few little perhaps little bugs, but they'll be ironed out over time.

You expect that on any complex instrument like this, just going to find them and the whole idea of paying for a quality instrument is that. Well, you're also like if you pay one on the big, you know three or four players on the market, you know that they're going to potentially do firmware updates better and refine their products better and stuff like that. So that's why you pay extra for those products. But Cygwin are doing fairly well in that regard recently from what I believe.

Please correct me down below always if that's wrong, but doesn't mean it's perfect. But yeah, it's interesting I don't know the value comparison if you're looking at getting like the hundred mega like the couple hundred megahertz version of this I Know there's lots of other options out there so, but in terms of a one gig bandwidth scope, yeah, it's currently the cheapest on the market. It's really interesting. It's good to have a siglent as competition that are really pushing the major players in that sort of market.

you know, the higher end market. And as I said Rygel we're coming out with a new one soon, which is going to be a new one gig plus. but I think it's one half or even higher bandwidth one. So yeah, really impressive stuff from the lower level players.

Siglent and Roy go fantastic. So anyway, haven't done a teardown of this. If you do want to tear down, let me know and I can possibly do that And by the way, a lot of people ask, why don't I review like more high end bits of kit like this? The reason is because it's not that a it's not that exciting. its laborious process as you can see: I can do one hour video many like several days to shoot something like this and edit it And and you're not even scratching the surface.

you'll miss stuff, you can't comprehensively test everything, and well, I'm actually debating the value of actually reviewing any high-end gear. So please let me know in the comments down below if I am actually wasting my time on high-end stuff. And you know, really, the reviews should only stick to like the low end affordable that you know. I Guess most people you know you're reading this review and you're deciding whether or not to spend eight thousand dollars or whatever it is for the one gig ban with scope, you probably don't need my review to do it.

You're going to get a demo unit. You're gonna test it for your own purposes, which is what you should always do. anyway. let me know down below if you see the value in reviewing high-end bits of gear like this, because that's why you don't see a lot of high-end equipment reviews because they're well, the lower end ones take a long time to, but the higher end ones just anyway.

As I said, if you want me to test something very specific or do a comparison with other scopes and it do have various scopes here, then I can do that and quickly whack it on the second channel. If you haven't subscribed Eevblog to is the place where I like just throw videos. I can just throw videos like that. There's no spit-and-polish in any of the editing or something.

Often it'll just be a single take. Job Ii and I can whack it over there. and Bob's your uncle. So anyway, if you liked the video, please give it a big thumbs up.

And as all the ways you can, Scott's down below, especially test gear like this, which is the best place to discuss it on the internet. By far, the biggest test and measurement forum on the internet is the Eevblog forum always linked in down below for the particular thread and there's just countless people there including Siglent and Rohde & Schwarz and Keysight and the other manufacturers are and not all of them, but some of them are on there. They'll answer your questions, they'll read your feedback, and all sorts of stuff like that. They're quite interactive on the Eevblog forum, which is great, so anyway, we'll miss the 3% battery left.

Yeah! I'm out of here. Catch you next time you.