Hi back on February 15, 2011 We had an EV blog World exclusive where I reviewed the Agilant 2000 and 3000 X series Scopes and it was a bit of a red letter day in the oscilloscope Market because these things really step the industry up in terms of price per performance. What you can get in the low to mid-range Market That brings us to today: Well, we've got another Eev blog World exclusive and if you just bought a 3,000 series, well, they've just released the 4,000 x series. Here it is. It's bigger, it's sexier, smells just as good.

And yes, it's touchcreen. And no, this is not designed to replace the 3000x series. So if you just bought one, don't worry. This is a new higher performance, higher price priced model.

So they've now. it's got a standardizing along the range 2,000x 3000x, and now 4000x. And if it looks familiar to you, it should because it is essentially identical to the 7,000 series. It's the same 7,000 series case, but they've just whacked the 3,000 Electronics in there.

And yes, it's got the Meaz Zoom for Asic So let's take a look at what this puppy has to offer. We will take a look at the differences between these because this will not be a full review because I've already done a full review of the 3000 x series and because they're based on essentially identical Hardware I'll only take a look at the significant differences you get in this new 4000 X Series model. Now, Agilant need to be a little bit careful when they base this new scope on the same Hardware as the 3000 Series cuz they've already copped a bit of flack on the differences between the 2 ,000 and the 3000 Series and how they're based on the same Hardware Well, this one again, is essentially based on exactly the same Hardware apart from the analog front ends that you get in the 2000 series scope. But there's a huge price difference.

You jump up from the 2,000 3,000 and now 4,000 Does it offer enough value for money to Warrant it over the 3,000 We'll find out now. One of the major differences, as you can see much bigger screen. this one's a 12in 800x 600 display compared to the 8 1/2 in 800x480 display on the 300 X Series Now I'm pretty disappointed in this actually. I Expected this big 12in screen to have greater resolution than 800x 600, but that's what the spec sheet says it's got.

But anyway, it is, definitely, um, a usable difference in the Scopes And this one seems to be a bit brighter as well than the 3000 X series. And you'll notice that because it's 800 by 600. the uh, the divisions on there are now Square as opposed to sort of rectangular on the 3000x series. So they sort of expanded it out like that and it is a much better, nicer, sexier, usable display.

So yeah, thumbs up there, but a bit disappointed with the resolution and the 4000x. like the 3000 comes in both two channel and four Channel versions. Just be careful if you're buying the two Channel version up front, you can't expand it to the 4 Channel version later just like on the 3000 Series So if you need the four channels, buy it up front. Now bandwidth wise, the 3,000 was 100 MHz to 1 GHz uh options The 4,000 X series.

it starts at 200, which is the one we've got here. This is the Msox 4024a, so it's sort of like the bottom of the range unit here. but it does have the 16 channel logic analyzer as well and the bandwidth on this can go up to 1.5 gig. But like the Uh 3000 X series, you can only upgrade the bandwidth within a very limited range as a software license.

so you can go from the 200 to the Uh 350 MHz one as a software license, but you cannot jump from the 350 MHz to the 500 MHz one. as a software license, you got to send it back to the factory and that's the same with the 3000 X series. It's a physically different analog front end and likewise, you can't go from 500 MHz one. If you bought it up to 1 gig or 1.5 you got to send it back to the factory and they got to change the board in it.

Same thing with this if you want to go from 500 to 1 gig. got to send it back to the factory so just be aware of that. Would have been nicer if um, you could software upgrade from 200 MHz to 1.5 gig. But 1.5 gig analog front end is massively expensive, so they can't put that in the base 200 MHz model.

and you can't even software upgrade from 1 gig to 1.5 gig. You got to send it back to the factory as well. Bummer, but analog front ends are still expensive. The 4,000 Series has a 5 gig sample per second sample rate across all the models, even on the 200 mahz one, whereas the Uh 3000x series was Uh.

4 gig samples per second and 5 gig samples only on the 1 GHz model. Now you might think, why bother having 5 gig samples per second on a 200 MHz scope? Because if you're using S xonx interpolation for example, which these Scopes are capable of doing, any good scope is capable of doing These days you only need four times the input bandwidth in theory. Aha. But as you know, when you switch on that second Channel there, it halves the sample rate as well.

The 4,000 is no different. Exactly the same architecture as the 3,000 in that respect. But where that extra sample rate comes in handy is for the high resol resolution mode. That 12-bit high resolution mode for the analog front end.

It's exactly the same as a 3000x series and that can take advantage of that higher sample rate as it does. Box Car Averaging of those samples in real time and that's where you need much greater than that four times sample rate. So that is, You know a that is a good decision to put 5 gig samples per second on a 200 MHz scope I Like it. Other differences are: 4 Meg Sample Memory standard This one only came with 2 Meg memory uh standard so none of that memory upgrade garbage.

So it's based on the same Meaz Zoom 4 As6. so they've just enabled the full full Meg uh sample memory across all the models. Now it's exactly the same update speed because it's the same Asic 1 million Uh waveforms per second and we'll check that of course, this one has not one, but two arbitrary Uh waveform generators in it and it still uses is the same Meaz Zoom for Asic How do they do it? Well, This one had dual Arbitary waveform generators built in. All along, they only had the one connector on the front it had two because the two demo connectors here had to generate those Uh demo signals and they actually Ed the Dual Channel buildin arbitary waveform generator to do that.

So this thing had it all along, but they only decided to put in one. So you got to wonder. You know, did they sort of have this 4,000 Series in mind when they designed this thing and they went, oh, only put one and maybe in a future one, we'll put two? Well anyway, either way, they've gone and done it. But the 4000x series comes standard which with a few things which were optional extra on the 3000 X series one is the segmented memory option that and the advanced waveform math is built in as well.

and it's also got the built-in Lan and VGA video output whereas that was a separate module on the 3000 X series mixed signal 16 channel logic analyzer exactly the same, but it's also optional extra. you can upgrade that later, pay extra later if you don't want it up front and Los s of the cable and the license. But all the other software options available in this thing in terms of Serial uh, protocol, decode, and all that sort of stuff is exactly the same as the 3000 X series with one uh, exception. The 4,000 X series does USB 2.0 serial dcode.

But one of the major differences which is one of the big selling points of this new scope is that it is touchscreen. It's got all your traditional knobs there so it doesn't really piss you off I Rather like it, but we'll go into that in more detail and along with the touchscreen capability is a new trigger option called Zone Trigger in and we'll take a look at this in detail as well. The main selling point of this thing is the bigger display, the zone triggering and the touchscreen capability and the Dual waveform generator. Apart from that, eh, it's a 3000x series.

So I've got to say I was initially a bit disappointed I Expected a bit more for an upgraded Uh Series in terms of Uh performance. Yeah, it's got some usability, um differences, but does it offer more performance in terms of Uh waveform updates per second? No. Does it offer anything better in terms of memory depth, which is one of the key factors of an oscilloscope? No, it doesn't. It's still that 4 Meg sample memory and that does seem quite low.

Um, but it does have segmented memory capability, but eh, that's not quite as good as say, the uh new segmented capability in the new Ryo scopes for example. it's not as flexible so foreg is nice. but I expected something to, you know, a big step up, especially because this used the 7,000 series case and the 7,000 series scope is 8 Meg points memory so it's double. But ah, they're Li limited.

But the reason they're limited is because it's based on the same meaz Zoom for Asic and to get the million wave form updates per second the fastest in the industry, it's still unbeatable, right? It's still an order of magnitude better than uh, anything else on the market in that respect. It is, um, limited to that chipset which has the 4M sample memory built in. That's how they get the speed, so maybe expected at least if they were going to use the same chipset, maybe they could have used one per ch chel instead of uh, sharing one megaz Zoom Asic across here and have some Franken Zilla scope or something that had uh megazoom 4 Asic per Channel plus dual arbitary waveform per channel. That would have been awesome, but probably would have cost a fortune.

And let's see the boot up time difference. It should be identical. Same operating system everything. So boom.

here we go. and do they flash up at the same time? The self test. Let's have a look. No, the 3000x series popped up first so it looks like the self test takes a bit longer.

There we go. Lovely mountain. Look at that. I Like it.

It's taking longer to boot up so it's got to do extra stuff presumably. I Don't mind this. uh, 7,000 series form factor. It is, uh, quite.

Uh, you know it's it's quite sexy. I Rather like it. it is very thin it out. not a problem whatsoever.

There four channels are still identical. They've still got the Dual Channel demo output, so they've got those cool demo signals which are very useful. They've added one extra uh USB uh on Port on the front here and they've added the Uh duel um, arbitrary waveform gen out and they've added the Uh external trigger input as well which is excellent. it's on the front, the other one was on the back which was a a bit annoying, but of course that means they had to move the 16 channel digital input mix signal capability around to the back here and that's what they've done.

There's the digital input exactly the same cable as before, exactly the same option. They've integrated the SVGA out as I said, we've got another USB host and USB device and they've got Lan builtin as well whereas that was a plugin L and VGA was a plugin optional extra before. Uh. one thing it doesn't have is Gpib.

Now apparently there is a Gpib option for it, but there's no, doesn't appear to be any slot or anywhere to plug that option into. So U maybe they've got a USB to uh Gpib option or something. Now they've got the same trigger out as they had before, which is useful. We'll be using that uh today to check out the update rate of this scope.

And one thing they've added over the 3000x series is a 10 MHz reference um, output, presumably input and output. So although I like this case and its form factor, one thing they've drop was the hidden probe compartment on the top. You'd flip the lid open. You can keep your probes in there and your accessories.

That was rather useful. Bummer. they've got an absolutely identical fan. Does seem a little bit quieter, perhaps.

I don't know, there's not much in it, but this isn't a particular, no particularly noisy scope. One thing: I Really like the carry strap on top of this good oldfashioned carry strap. Beautiful. Where's my scope gone? Anyone see my scope? Bastards! They've made a small change to a couple of the buttons here: Run Stop single and the channel buttons.

they W they did light up exactly like these wave gen and these Zone buttons. They were completely clear buttons and they lit up the whole thing. but now there's just little Pokey sort of. uh I don't really like it much, but eh, just having a winge as I said.

One of the things I don't like is that they've gone from the XGA display 1024x768 on the Uh 7000 series down to 800x 600 on the 4,000 series. and you're losing visible waveform area because of the Meaz Zoom 4 Asic So just like the 2000 3000, Series you can't collapse this menu to get a bigger, usable window. That is an inherent disadvantage with the Meaz Zoom 4 Asic and the price you pay for that 1 million waveform updates per second because that Asic needs to write to a designated area on the screen so you can't just change that willy-nilly. It's a bit disappointing, but I Do like the 1 million waveform updates per second.

And the good news is, if you're used to and like the 2000 3000 X series, The 4,000 is exactly the same, although the keypad layout is a little bit different because it's to match the 7,000 series. All the functionality. All the menu systems all exactly the same. So I won't go through all the options and all the various things.

If you want that, look at the Agilant 3000 review. I'll link it in down below. it's exactly the same. So you go into the acquire menu and it's all exactly the same.

They've changed a little bit of the look on it on the screen and now of course it's a touch screen as well. So you can do it using touch screen or do it using the traditional buttons. and I know I heard everyone groan when I mentioned this thing's a touch screen I groan too I went oh Bloody Touchcreen A give me a break, they're going to ruin this thing. Well, actually they haven't I'm pleasantly surprised by this thing because look, it's got this Magic Touch button here if you get frustrated that you know, oh oh, I accidentally, you know touched the screen and did something oh bloody annoying.

Just kill die you mongr and it's no longer a touch scope. It works exactly using your traditional menu buttons. no problem whatsoever. But if you do want that touch capability, switch it on for a second.

Draw your little window like this to set up your touch Zone trigger and all that sort of jazz and Bob's your uncle so it really caters for both. Take a look up here. This little Agilant Spark It's called, didn't actually know that, but it's called the Agilant spark symbol. There's a spark symbol up here and you've got this drop- down menu so they cater for the windows.

Fanatics Oh I Love my drop- down menu I Want to use that thing so you can go in there and there? There is nothing available in here that you can't do with your traditional menus and everything else. It's just yet another way to do it. So instead of pushing the button oh, I'm going to go up there I'm going to go run and stop because I like using Windows though although does run Windows CE It's got the Windows CE sticker on the back runs the embedded Windows OS just like uh, the 200 3000 x series as well. It is not a Windows interface you can't run Windows apps.

You can't get to the Windows desktop. none of that they've just added. This is Agilent's own little Frills that they've added to the screen here, so don't worry, this is not a window scope. It works like a real scope.

So let's start to look at some of the features that this touchcreen offers. Let's first of all, take a look at this new Zone triggering capability. CU This is one of the huge selling points now. I'm running the Zone trigger uh demo here just because it's very convenient.

I could set up my own waveform, but this uh example one is quite good. Now we've got, you know, just a regular waveform here. It's on, uh, Channel One, No big deal, right? regular digital waveform and you might zoom in and you might notice that there's this occasional little glitch in there and you might turn up your intensity and go, oh, look at that. Look at that.

There's something going on there. This funny business, you see it over here as well. Being able to trigger off that particular point would ordinarily be, um, you know, not an easy task to do at all. I mean you move your trigger up here and it's just flipped it around to here and you know that won't allow you to single shot capture that thing.

I Mean if we just go single shot mode and then just go bang bang bang where never go to capture that or we might eventually if we can see something on the screen like that. So let's try and trigger on that. So let's draw a little window around there and it pop ups. It pops up with these rather convoluted at first options.

It's got two different zones you can set up so you can set up a scenario like an and or type scenario between the zones. so we're only inter interested. If Zone one intersects Zone one must intersect. So the waveform must intersect somewhere with inside that window for the trigger to happen.

So let's go must intersect like that. And Bingo! We are now triggering on that particular point right there. So if we can now singleshot capture that, we can go into single shot mode. Bang! You see how it waited a while there I'm going to single shot press single shot and we're waiting a bit because it doesn't happen very often, but it eventually will happen.

Hello McFly There it is Bang because it eventually went through that particular trigger point there. Beautiful! I Love this. Zone trigger capability. It's really neat and then of course if we draw a second Zone say I don't know.

Over here Somewhere like this. and we say zone two must intersect. So now it's got to go through both zones in order to intersect. so we'll find that that now won't trigger.

But if you had some complicated, convoluted thing you know bastard of a problem you're trying to trigger off, then, well, having two zones there might be useful I Like it and we can go. well. it doesn't need to go through that zone there. it must not intersect through that zone and you see how I'm Uh, there we go.

It's triggered so it's now excluding that zone pH there. This is really powerful and the other good thing about it is that you can expand the time base like that and zoom right out and then draw it. Say all the way over here must intersect and it still keeps Zone one right off the screen all the way over here like that. So you can put those zones anywhere within the waveform window, not just on screen.

Now the other thing that the touch screen is useful for. Check out this up here at the moment. We're in select mode, but we can also do waveform drag mode like that. and we can just drag that waveform along.

So if we single shot capture that, we can just drag it with our finger. just like you do on a tablet. that's you know. It's actually quite intuitive I Know it seems like a bit of a wank Factor but I I actually rather like it I Think it's quite neat, but unfortunately, no, you can't do the Uh two finger pinch and zoom thing.

Sorry, and the fun doesn't end there, folks either. Check this out. I Can take this ground symbol here for Channel One. Here it is: I Can just move that waveform up and down.

Beautiful. And yes, the trigger point. You can also drag the trigger point up and down. Fantastic and quite useful, but that's only good if you like to touch things.

If you're you're a knob man. No problem, just play around with your knobs. You can use this scope exactly like an ordinary scope. You don't have to touch the this thing at all.

There's the magic bugger off button. Beautiful. You can pop up the menu like this and you can select 50 Ohms one. Meg And then you can select the help as well.

That's what the blue there is for. So Bingo the help will pop up on that. You can get rid of that and you can kill that thing there so it's not too bad at all. I Don't mind it.

so it's almost to the point where anything you can see on the screen is touchable. I mean Channel One? You want to Mark around with Channel One. That brings up the Channel One menu, brings up the Channel 2 menu, brings up the horizontal menu trigger menu. There's a whole bunch of these uh, side panels here which you can also call up.

Let's call up our DVM function. For example, there's our digital Voltmeter. They claim you know this is one of the major five instruments in one feature. It's it's not that great, but but what you can do is you can drag it over to here and Bingo! You've got your little DVM panel and you can put it anywhere you like and you can do the same thing with other stuff.

If you've got uh, say your cursor menu like that, you can whack your cursor information anywhere you like and you can put as many of those anywhere on the screen as you like. There's one thing I do find a little bit annoying is I've Got The Touch mode here completely turned off so I can't touch anything at all anymore. But let's say I push the uh vertical button here. It still pops up with the same window to tell me that I'm going into or out of fine mode with the same look and it eventually vanishes of course.

but you know it's just I think if you turn off that touch, I don't want any of this window crap popping up. And yes, you can even drag the cursors around as well. Well, not only can we scroll through the waveform like that, but then the cursor stays here. It doesn't go off the screen so you can just grab it and bring it back in like that.

That really is quite neat and same for the Uh vertical scale there. The Y stays there as well and you can just drag it up and down. Beautiful! That really the usability of this thing you might think. Yeah, this touch thing's a bit of a gimmick, but no, it's actually quite neat.

And one of the good things with these Uh panels that you can move around like this. If you think that they're uh, obscuring the info, you can actually set those to transparent. Excellent. and just like the 3000.

Yes, it still has the issue with the frequency measurement is taken from the display data and not from the full memory data. so you can see it's got four digits there and it's matching down here. but you see it drops down a digit as we go up in the time base and it's Dro down again. it still stays the hardware frequency counter down here, so that one's still a hardware counter, but as you can see, it does eventually drop down.

so these measurement cursors only display what's on the screen. So you've got two uh, Wave Gen buttons here. You've got two outputs down the bottom here and it's exactly the same. You got the same selection of waveforms down there and by the way, I don't have to scroll through there I can just touch that and uh, of course go to sign Cardinal or something like that and it's the same.

You know frequency and amplitude instead of just uh, ramping up the frequency with the knob which is, you know it's okay I I I Like the velocity factors they've got set there and everything, it works quite well. but with the touchcreen you now have on screen keyboard for all these things that before were you know, kind of annoying to enter 3.14159 mahz not a problem at all. there. it is Beautiful! They've added one extra menu option here dual Channel and that gives you the ability to track uh, frequency, amplitude, offset, and duty cycle or a combination of those between the two channels if you desire.

Now they have decided to add one nice capability to the AR Gen that was missing on the Uh 3000. Series is modulation capability now. Although it still doesn't have external modulation capability, it does have internal. We can get the different types AM FM and Uh FSK modulation neat and we can do SCI square or ramp for the modulation frequency and the depth as well.

Neat. I like it, so that was a big capability that was missing on the Agilent 3000. So for some people that might be a uh, a nice little sweetener to not only get the dual Channel AR capability, but get modulation as well. but the 3000 Series scope wasn't completely uh, devoid of modulation, could actually hook it up to the PC and do modulation through the software I believe in a certain limited respect.

so it was actually capable of it, but now they've got it built in and bingo we have our nice amplitude modulated sine wave. Beautiful! And as with the 3000x, it's got all these training signals which as I've mentioned before, are not only good for teaching and stuff like that, but good for uh General use as well. If you trying to trigger on uh something that you haven't uh triggered on for a long time and it's complicated to set up then you can actually generate the signal using the AR gen on these demo outputs here and you can uh then set up your trigger on your scope for your real signal using the simulated one on here and it's quite neat and it still has you know the list of all these different Uh training signals that you can generate. One thing missing though from the serial uh capability of this thing like on the 3000 X series as well is no JTAG Don't know why um, this seems to be quite across.

uh, most scopes on the market I think um JTAG seems to be um one ominous emission from all of these Scopes I Don't know why this really is one of the killer Um apps so to speak. For want of a better term for these. X Series Scopes Compared to others on the market that don't have these the AR Gen built in with the training signal, you know it's like having a complete demo board with you built into the scope at all times. We captured three run pulses there just with single shot.

but if you had an issue with real run pulses then you could figure out how to set up the trigger properly to actually uh, you know to do that in the real world And let's have a look at the zoom capability here if we want to zoom into that going into Window mode there, let's look at that little run pulse down in there. Zoom horizontal uh waveform horizontal Zoom there bang. You can undo it at any time and it goes back to where you work. So if you accidentally poking the screen like I do I'm bit of a poker at things then ah it's annoying you you know know you mess something up.

You can always go back. Now let's have a look at the probes which you get with this thing and I really quite like them. Here's the old, well, the old Uh 3000 x series. uh on these new ones are 700 megahertz folks.

Brilliant for a passive probe fixed 10:1 of course it's and I got these 700 megaherz probes even with the 200 mahz scope. so it looks like they're offering those standard across the entire range. and uh, they are much smaller and more. Compact and especially the tip on it is really, really, quite nice.

So it is a physically a smaller probe to really get into those tight places. it feels really high quality. I like it? not sure. I like the new insulated alligator clip on it.

um, kind of prefer these even though they can be a bit annoying and short things out. I Don't know if I like this particular type. It'd be nice if they offered both, especially in this sort of price range. But that probe folks that is H sex on a stick right there.

Really beautiful fine point on that I Love it. And it comes standard with an alignment tool of course and your, uh, low inductance. uh, ground. Point spare probe tips as well.

Fantastic! And there's one thing that the tight asses didn't provide with these new lovely 700 MHz Pro that they did on the 3000 is a probe to BNC adapter Bummer. And of course you'll get your bag of obligatory identifier rings to put on your probe and they match the colors on the front of the Uh scope as well as the waveforms on the screen. And the probes are Tada made in Germany Fantastic! Hi to all my German viewers I Love it! Not everything is made in the Agilant. um Malaysian manufacturing plant Who? German M You can smell the quality.

And yes, even if you buy the 1.5 gig model of the 4,000 series, you will get the 700 MHz Pros Because this is as far as um, passive probe Technologies go I Think there might be one or two on the market that go to a gig, but really, um, most of them go to 500 MHz So they've done well to get a passive probe up to 700 MHz Really. So if you want to go higher than that 700 MHz passive probe, you've got to Shell out at least four figures and get one of these 2 gig active probes. Now one thing I'm not really sure about are these really weird ass looking tilting feet on this thing. I mean I Kind of preferred the little flip out feet on the front of the 23000 series.

You know you just lift it up like that and flip them out and you've got some extra angle on your scope. At this thing, you got to go whoa and almost flip it over on its face and look at that. But once once it's there I mean you know it's it's pretty darn good. I Mean there's no problem at all punching these buttons and having this sucker fall over.

but if anything, it's a little. You know if you move it a little bit forward, it's got rubber at the back here. It doesn't have rubber on the front, but I do know why they've done it because the you know this thing is quite tall vertically like this. So I guess they've had to add that so it extends the arm right out there and just Ure that the thing doesn't fall over.

So I know where they're coming from. it's a it's a limitation of this slim form factor. Now one thing they have, uh changed SL improved on this uh, gooey layout is because they got more vertical screen resolution. now.

they've got a bigger info strip along the top of the screen now and they've able to add uh, extra information in there. 500 MTS with a slash. so that's per division there. But they've also got 1.35 6 volts.

And you might ask, well, what is that? it's wasn't actually immediately obvious, so that's actually the zero point relative to the center of the screen like that. So we'll move channel one up and down, so that's telling you how far it's offset from the center. Whether or not that's useful or a tad confusing I Don't know? make up your own mind and with the horizontal here, they've got 100 nond and then the slash so that's your, that's your traditional horizontal uh per Division and then under it. We've got 2.00 micr seconds if we press our button here to if we Center our our delay.

So that's our delay offset right there. and once again, it's exactly the same font I probably would have preferred like both the vertical one here that top one to be cuz that's your main one. maybe that bigger or highlighted or bold or something like that that. um just to separate it from the figure below it and I Thought we'd just do a quick test of the waveform update rate I've done this before on the 3000 I think in a previous video, but we'll do it again.

So what I've got is this, uh, coax here coming on the trigger output from the 4000 series scope I'm just feeding in a 1 mahz sine wave here. that's the key. same as or higher than the anticipated update rate of the scope. in this case 1 Meg samples per second 1 MHz Let's have a look at on the three 3,000 series scope.

at that trigger output waveform 20 nond per Division and higher it can jump up to 1 Meg but at 50 nond it looks like at it's going to drop to 500 and so 500 Mig samples per second, then 250 by the looks of it, then 125 and so forth it, will drop down as your time brace decreases and even when we turn on processing like our Fft for example, I mean don't worry, worry about what we're getting there, we're still getting 1 million waveform updates per second. Fantastic! And that's probably all. I Can uh show you with this new 4,000 series scope because it is basically a 3,000 series scope and there may be a couple of extra things in here I missed I've only been playing with this for a short amount of time I believe it's the only one in the country at the moment, so yeah, I was pretty lucky to get this. Now if you want to see the full Uh capabilities of this thing, you should watch the Um 3000x series review cuz this thing is essentially a 3000x with a few extra bells and whistles and that'll be linked in below.

So the verdict on the new Agilant 4000 X Series Scope Well, of course it's very nice, it's very sexy, and yeah, of course it gets a thumbs up. but I don't know I just can't help feeling pretty underwhelmed with it I Expected more really I thought I Almost hate to say it, but I think the megazoom 4 Asic in this thing is almost cramping its style. It's almost limiting this thing I mean it was great in the 3000x series, but then, well, yeah, the 4000x has got some nice stuff. I mean the screen is really nice? Okay, but it should be higher res for the extra money and the size of it.

Quite frankly, it's a little bit too small. Yes, the touchscreen stuff. Fantastic. They've got that right.

usability. Yeah, there's other touchscreen scopes on the market. This one works really well. I Like it.

It's um, you know, if you don't like it, switch it off or if you do like it, you got some extra capability. Really quite neat. but ah, the Um Zone triggering Fantastic. I Like it.

Big winner there. Um Jewel AR Fantastic. They've added the modulation stuff. brilliant, but apart from that, that's all you get.

I mean it's going to be a useful upgrade for some people, but I I don't know. I Was just hoping for more. Maybe a new meaz Zoom 5 Asic with some extra memory or something like that tacked on, but aome better segmented memory capability to, uh, match some of the stuff Riyo is doing these days. but gee, I don't know.

just expected more. A bit let down, but of course it is a great scope if you can afford it. And therein lies the rub folks. I've got some prices here now.

these are Australian prices I Don't have the US prices at the moment, but they should be pretty much, um, on par giving the uh, uh, really super strong Aussie batler at the moment. So here we go. It starts at $ 6,046 um Australian and goes up to $2,730 So that's from the 200 MHz two Channel version up to the 1.5 gig 4 Channel version and well, geez, six grand for the two channel entry level thing. Oh gee, I Don't know.

Let's compare apples and apples a bit more, shall we? Let's take the 200 MHz 4 Channel version of the 4,000 Series This one is $ 7,557 for the 4 channel 200 MZ one. As you see it here with no ARB With the 3000 Series scope, they're actually throwing in ARB for free at the moment. Brilliant. That's like an $800 option for NYX.

So the waveform. The AR waveform option for this thing? $1,100 bucks. It's nice, but you can get dual Channel you know, 20 MHz plus arbitrary waveform generator for well under a grand these days. Sure, it's not an agilant, but geez, you know I mean it's pricey.

So really, the three an equivalently equipped three ,000 with the free waveform ARG option is only 4,470 bucks. There's a three grand difference basically. Um, you know when you look down to it, between this 4,000 and the 3000 Series scope 3 grand extra. Granted, this thing does have some build-in stuff like the VGA land capability which the 3000 doesn't and it's also got the 4M memory upgrade.

but even if you take those and you say you know, it's still a couple of grand more so although the scope itself gets a thumbs up. and well, yeah, it has to, it's a cool bit of Kit You can't deny it, but it's a thumb sideways at best as an upgrade to the 3000 Series And in terms of value for money, uh, compared to the 3,000 series, it's a thumbs down because seriously, the software options for this thing are some of them are double what they are on the 3000 Series scope for exactly the same software option You kidding me? And therein lies one of the major issues with this thing. If you decide to buy into this because of the big screen and the touch Zone capability in the Dual Argen, you're going to get hammered for those software options. So it's going to be a higher cost of ownership.

much higher than the 3000 Series I mean some of the 3000 Series I think I complained in the original review of that that they're a little bit pricey, right? Because well, it's Agate and that's what they do this one. So yeah, everyone talks about the software options and how they're a pain in the ass and they're a ripoff and all that sort of thing. But the fact is, this is how big companies have to operate so that they can afford to innovate and develop Scopes Like these X series I mean they have to, uh, make sufficient margin on the larger end uh models so that they can afford to offer you cool technology in the lower end models like they did with the two and the 3000. but in this case, Agilant milking this thing for all it's worth moo.

I I Can't see how you can justify paying more for this thing and you might as well get a tricked up 3,000 series. but I'm sure some people like it. Looks really sexy, still smells nice eh? I Know what you're thinking: can it survive the Eev blog drop test There Only one way to find out. Give it the old toss because you know you're debugging a circuit or something like that.

Something's really bugging you. You just want to toss his scope. AC Ross A room. It's an important test.

No scope's been able to survive it yet, but well. I Don't have high hopes for it, but we got to find out. It's a bit of a shame really. it's a nice bit of Kit I like this thing, but it's got to be done.

I'm a professional reviewer so don't try this at home folks. I Am a professional Here we go. same as all the others. hopeless.

When is somebody going to design a scope that can survive a simple fall from a bench? It's not rocket science. Catch you next time now. I Got to clean this up. It's the worst part of the job.