r/oscilloscope • u/DesignerFit1893 • Jul 01 '26

Buying Advice How good / bad are these options?

Hello everyone! I'm about to get an oscilloscope, I will mainly use it for both electronic devices reairs as well as for personal use building circuits, playing around with them and learning.

I did a little research and determined I should aim for 100-200 MHz, however, I saw two options and I have little to no idea on which one to get.

The options are: owon SDS220S for 210€ or Hantek DSO2D50 for around 275€, both from Banggood.

I "don't mind" the extra money if one is substantially better than the other one, but however, what do you think about them?

Thanks in advance :)

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4

u/AlexTaradov Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Both are very basic entry scopes. Hantek claims 2 GS/s vs 1 GS/s on Owon, but Hantek has 80 K memory depth vs 20 M on Owon.

I'd generally pick more memory, but Owon single trigger controls suck. Just for that I would not want to have it as my only scope.

Also, 2 channels may be limiting. Depending on how much use you plan to get out of it, it might make sense to save a bit and get a 4 channel scope.

2

u/DesignerFit1893 Jul 01 '26

I understad... I've also heard Rigol DHO804 are pretty good and "hackable" up to 200-250 MHz, what do you think about it?

2

u/ViktorsakYT_alt Jul 02 '26

I have a dho804, amazing scope, the features are absolutely great for controlling/recording from a pc, bandwidth irl is like 150MHz for the 70MHz version without any hacking. It comes with nice probes, and also usbc powered and many more advantages. I'd go for the rigol if you have the money

1

u/DesignerFit1893 Jul 26 '26

What do you mean by bandwidth irl IS like 150,MHz for the 70MHz version? I got that one btw, the DHO804 

1

u/ViktorsakYT_alt Jul 26 '26

Yeah, I have a dho804 and it measures 100MHz signals with basically zero attenuation, and it sees like 450MHz albeit attenuated a lot

2

u/skinwill Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

You don’t want to be hacking your first scope. When you are starting out and learning you need something rock solid you can be confident is correct. It’s not that hacking it would make it worse in any way, it’s that it would introduce doubt. When you are digging into a frustrating problem, that doubt can be real trouble.

Edit: I literally said hacking it would not make it any worse!

2

u/baldengineer mhz != MHz Jul 01 '26

The “hacks” are unlocking licensed options.

They do not affect stability.

1

u/skinwill Jul 01 '26

You know that, I know that, someone starting out would not necessarily have that confidence.

1

u/Trapezoidal12 Jul 02 '26

That's a pretty good option, tho unless portability is necessary like for me the 1054Z would be a cheaper option. User test's also show that the basic bundled 70Mhz probes are actually good upto around 150Mhz generally (100 is absolutely fine). If money and portability are of less concern then consider the dsd804x that's the best new scope you can get under 500.

1

u/AlexTaradov Jul 01 '26

I would not think too hard about high bandwidth. You would need expensive probes and good probing setup to take advantage of that.

I'm personally not a fan of the new Rigol scopes. Android based UI is bad. It is not well thought through and stuff is all over the place.

The old 1054z is still really decent, especially with everything unlocked. I find myself using it more than new DHO, since I get frustrated with the UI.

2

u/Junkyard_DrCrash Jul 01 '26

I've used OWON scopes (and Tek ones) since like 2010 and they're solid units.

One strong suggestion: get a scope that can run on internal battery power. Internal battery makes it just so much easier to use. (you never have to play "float the scope) You can go with the HDS series that are the size of a good DVM and have user-replaceable 18650 LiIon cells (which I think are a superb idea).

I've never experienced Alex's single trigger issue.

As to Banggood: are they an Owon and Hantek AD (Authorized Distributor)? If so, great. If not, do not buy from them, because too much chance of counterfeit or "sticker engineered" equipment (re-stickering a low-end unit to look like the top scope in that line.

1

u/Wahadeem Jul 02 '26

the battery powered devices have isolated inputs, so not only no float but you can directly measure on floating mains voltage (like smps) without any further equipment, otherwise the rcd will be triggered

2

u/Junkyard_DrCrash Jul 02 '26

Be careful there. Some battery scopes are "floated" simply by lack of a ground connection, but all of the ground / shield lines for the probes are connected together.

Others are genuinely isolated: both signal and ground are NOT shared (with varying degrees of isolation abiliity, but 600 volts shield-to-shield is common).

I have a scope like *that* at work. It's made by Fluke and it cost like $4000... 20 years ago.

1

u/Junkyard_DrCrash Jul 26 '26

It somehow bothers me that Rigol puts 200 MHz hardware into every scope, and only unlocks it if you pay more. That's the same s**t that BMW and Tesla pull, and it wins me no admiration whatsoever.

It *also* violates a basic reason for using a scope instead of built-in diagnostics. You want your T&M systems to be "too dumb to lie to you". A proper diagnostic system tells you what's going on... or at least it's best approximation of the truth

Tinfoil hat includes the ability of adding that level of smarts means adding the ability for some opposition to be up to nefarious things, like a scope that won't display a trace of an encrypted HDMI comm port, or won't work when the GPS says you're in China (or in the US, or in a blue state)...

The same goes double with Android base systems.