Cheapie Oscilloscopes
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Mr Pointy

Original Poster:

12,654 posts

177 months

Friday 10th October
quotequote all
Has anyone got one of these sub-£150 oscilloscopes? Are they any good or are they a bit rubbish?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=oscilloscope

I doubt you get much for £26 but are the more expensive ones worth it?

LordLoveLength

2,206 posts

148 months

Friday 10th October
quotequote all
Depends what you want it for I guess?
I’ve a cheapie 2 channel 100MHz - probably gets absolutely nowhere near 100MHz but is very useful.
The areas where savings are to be made will be bandwidth and memory- a decent buffer for storage is very useful along with decent trigger menu.
The sub £50 automotive ones would be fine for abs signals, crank timing, canbus checks etc but not much more, I doubt they have much storage so are more a ‘live’ monitoring tool.

f0xy

164 posts

208 months

Friday 10th October
quotequote all
Mr Pointy said:
Has anyone got one of these sub-£150 oscilloscopes? Are they any good or are they a bit rubbish?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=oscilloscope

I doubt you get much for £26 but are the more expensive ones worth it?
Picoscope. Spend as much as the freqency/memory you need.
Even the 2000 series are great for most things automotive.
It comes in to its own with the software/live decoding for the money.

OutInTheShed

12,414 posts

44 months

Friday 10th October
quotequote all
What do you want it for?

You can do a certain amount with a soundcard, just some software.

I've had one of the 4 channel DSO pocket models for about 10 years, it has its uses, but I mostly prefer an old analogue Tektronix scope I paid about £80 for many years ago..

I expect the market has moved on, but the best answer will be different if you're trying to diagnose say EFI on your car rather than fault find a hifi amp.

Mr Pointy

Original Poster:

12,654 posts

177 months

Saturday 11th October
quotequote all
Well actually I'm trying to check Wordclock & Black & Burst or TLS reference but it sounds as if it might be worth trying one. Lugging my old Tektronix around on site isn't really practical. I don't need voltmeter functionality & some of the reviews comment that meter response is slow anyway so I was looking at this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oscilloscope-Handheld-Ban...

OutInTheShed

12,414 posts

44 months

Sunday 12th October
quotequote all
Mr Pointy said:
Well actually I'm trying to check Wordclock & Black & Burst or TLS reference but it sounds as if it might be worth trying one. Lugging my old Tektronix around on site isn't really practical. I don't need voltmeter functionality & some of the reviews comment that meter response is slow anyway so I was looking at this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oscilloscope-Handheld-Ban...
When you're trying to look at more complex digital signals, triggering a simple becomes an issue.

One of my scopes has a built in circuit to trigger on analogue TV signals for instance.
You may be getting into 'logic analyser' territory or need some add-on hardware or software to extract the signals you want.