I used to use the 1st gen Discovery at a previous job and it had plenty of rough edges, and it was also less capable as an oscilloscope than the Saleae, but it also showed a lot of potential.
I haven't tried the 3rd gen but it does look very promising if you're building a hardware home lab on a tight budget and can't afford or don't want multiple dedicated devices cluttering your working area.
At the advertised MSRP of $380, as a do-it-all device, it's unbeatable.
Well, if you need to fit the lab in laptop case sure, also great as a learning tool for a classroom (which I think was original idea behind it?) but in most cases you'd be far better off with say Rigol 1054Z + whatever cheapest logic analyzer/generator you can get off aliexpress.
I have AD2 and it had some unique niches it is good at (14 bits makes it somewhat capable at doing some analysis on audio devices), but I by far prefer to use my cheap-ish scope for near-anything else. Just amount of memory alone is big advantage, higher input range (AD only have like...2 or 3 IIRC, rest is faked by wasting bits on ADC), proper probe sockets without needing adapter, ability to just press buttons and knobs to do what you need without getting back to the computer and going thru menus etc.
Then again, ability to script measurement is also pretty nifty. Can be done on many scopes but by far more effort than on AD
At the academic price of $250 I'm extremely tempted, but my personal value for it is decreased because I already own a "$775" 200MHz SDS1204X-E (hacked $400-500 SDS1104X-E) and a $1,500 LAP-C Pro (32064M) Logic Analyzer (250MHz-2GHz, 64-256MB/channel depending on how many channels you're actually capturing).
The main benefit to me would be the AWG feature, and maybe the software is more usable than the LAP-C software. Would this be a good option for me or is there another AWG I should consider for that price point to get much better performance/features? I ask here because there's probably quite a few hobbyists on HN with a basic scope and logic analyzer but lacking an AWG.
If you buy Sigilent AWD you will be able to steer it from your scope, just connect them via USB cable
For example I have SDS-1104X-E and SDG1025 and I can from the scope setup a frequency sweep on the generator then have scope make frequency response graph
Comments
I used to use the 1st gen Discovery at a previous job and it had plenty of rough edges, and it was also less capable as an oscilloscope than the Saleae, but it also showed a lot of potential.
I haven't tried the 3rd gen but it does look very promising if you're building a hardware home lab on a tight budget and can't afford or don't want multiple dedicated devices cluttering your working area.
At the advertised MSRP of $380, as a do-it-all device, it's unbeatable.
Well, if you need to fit the lab in laptop case sure, also great as a learning tool for a classroom (which I think was original idea behind it?) but in most cases you'd be far better off with say Rigol 1054Z + whatever cheapest logic analyzer/generator you can get off aliexpress.
I have AD2 and it had some unique niches it is good at (14 bits makes it somewhat capable at doing some analysis on audio devices), but I by far prefer to use my cheap-ish scope for near-anything else. Just amount of memory alone is big advantage, higher input range (AD only have like...2 or 3 IIRC, rest is faked by wasting bits on ADC), proper probe sockets without needing adapter, ability to just press buttons and knobs to do what you need without getting back to the computer and going thru menus etc.
Then again, ability to script measurement is also pretty nifty. Can be done on many scopes but by far more effort than on AD
At the academic price of $250 I'm extremely tempted, but my personal value for it is decreased because I already own a "$775" 200MHz SDS1204X-E (hacked $400-500 SDS1104X-E) and a $1,500 LAP-C Pro (32064M) Logic Analyzer (250MHz-2GHz, 64-256MB/channel depending on how many channels you're actually capturing).
The main benefit to me would be the AWG feature, and maybe the software is more usable than the LAP-C software. Would this be a good option for me or is there another AWG I should consider for that price point to get much better performance/features? I ask here because there's probably quite a few hobbyists on HN with a basic scope and logic analyzer but lacking an AWG.
If you buy Sigilent AWD you will be able to steer it from your scope, just connect them via USB cable
For example I have SDS-1104X-E and SDG1025 and I can from the scope setup a frequency sweep on the generator then have scope make frequency response graph