Electrical Engineering & Electronics Design

I have had a serious change in mindset over electronics testing equipment over the past year.

Some company’s prices for electronics testing equipment are simply absurd considering factors such as technology design level and components used and actual functionality and PC connectivity.

These company’s have simply stepped over the line of outright greed now.

Electronics testing equipment company’s are intentionally restricting performance in software and then holding basic upgrades in performance for ransom, charging obscene prices to unlock basic features.

Some company’s advertise PC connectivity for their hardware and then when software is downloaded and installed, customers are then informed they must pay an obscene ransom price to purchase a key to unlock the PC connectivity software or data recording functionality.

Then users find the software simply rubbish, basic level at best with bugs included.

This is simply absurd considering that you can buy £20 items now that have full PC connectivity with phone app and full PC GUI software. There is no excuse for charging obscene prices for software simply to connect your device to a computer. Absurd, greedy and, simply taking advantage!

Also I am getting increasingly annoyed with large YouTube channels promoting such ridiculous equipment and severely outdated and overpriced equipment.

98% of every single repair I have ever done, or piece of equipment I have ever designed, I could have easily done with basic low-cost electronics testing equipment and software for that matter.

It is nice to have good electronics testing equipment, don’t get me wrong. However in virtually all cases 95% of the time it is not essentially needed or required. It is brand name BS being pushed with paid promotions to Youtubers.

I make it a personal mission and challenge now to repair electronics with the cheapest equipment I have in the lab. Just to make things more interesting.

Possessions are just things. In virtually all cases simply liability’s that consume assets and lose money over time. It is ok if those things are used as assets that guarantee to pay for themselves over time but for many this is not the case.

Here's another lower cost set of 12-bit and 16-bit scopes from Pico that may be more desirable from a price stand-point since they only have to sell the front-end acquisition receivers and the software.

https://www.picotech.com/products/oscilloscope-specifications

I think that a good value scope would be the Picoscope 5444D 4-channel, 200 MHz, 12-bit, 16-channel MSO, signal generator, and 200 MHz spectrum analyzer at $3605 (USD) https://www.picotech.com/oscilloscope/5000/flexible-resolution-oscilloscope

Bear in mind that when buying a scope that the hardware is only half of the picture, since many of the features in software can be quite complex when digging out specific signal characteristics, triggering options, and decode options for serial protocols.

Tiepie Handyscope https://www.tiepie.com/en/wifi-oscilloscope is hard to beat, especially with wifi connection and can float on battery power. 16 bit (slower sampling), 14, 12 and 8 bit up to 250MHz bandwidth.

I used a HS3 for 10 years, then got WS5 which I love. Drag and drop filters, average, summing, FFT, I even made a setup that displays op amp noise in nV/Hz1/2 in real time.

How do these compare in specifications, performance, and price to the picotech scopes as they are competing in the same size and price class ?

Please detail out the comparison of WHY these are better or worse according to the specs, and what the price (higher or lower) gives the value.