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Rigol MSO2202A-S
5.0
Haven't used it.
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Anonymous on
May 18, 2020
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Excellent features at a great price point
5.0
I was looking for an oscilloscope with 200MHz bandwidth, mixed signal, intensity grading, a large amount memory, serial communications decoding, and an ethernet port. The Rigol MSO2202A-S has intensity grading which provides an analog scope like display showing more frequent portions of the waveform in brighter intensity. This is very handy for modulated signals. It also has up to 50,000 waveform update rate. While the majority of people are not ever going to need to debug infrequent signals, it is still a useful to see the full envelope of all the traces to know that you are not missing anything. Some oscilloscopes will have a button with a magnifying glass for zooming in horizontally. The Rigol does the same thing but calls it delayed sweep and activates this mode when the horizontal scale knob is pressed. The Rigol came bundled with the 56M memory upgrade which is way more than the maximum of 1M for Tektronix MSO2022 or Keysight MSOX2022. Actually Keysight comes with only 100k unless you pay for the upgrade to 1M. The included bundle from Rigol also has I2C, RS232, CAN, and SPI decoding which is a very expensive upgrade on Tektronix, Keysight, or Rohde & Schwarz. To get similar features, a Keysight MSXO2022 scope would cost about $5500, a Tektronix MSO2022B scope would cost about $5100, and a Rohde & Schwarz RTB 2k-202M scope would cost about $4370. For the amount of features per price, the Rigol easily wins while being about 2 to 3 times less expensive.
There are a considerable number of advanced triggers included in the bundle such as dual slope (both positive and negative), 720p, 1080p, 1080i, window (hysteresis), pulse, runt, pattern, serial decode triggers, setup/hold, and many more. The narrow pulse width trigger can be set all the way down to as small as 2ns. Some of the older Tektronix scopes could only trigger on pulse widths as small as 39.6ns which always seemed very limiting. The Rigol is big improvement on the pulse width triggers. One minor annoyance is that the Rigol 2000 series does not have a 50% trigger button for edge triggers. Rigol’s 4000 series, 1000 series, and the competition all have it. Instead you can set the trigger level to 0V by pushing the trigger level knob. That is a mistake that Rigol really should fix.
The meaning of Rigol’s record and play back was at first not obvious. It is not a long recording of a single trigger event. It is actually segmented memory which the Tektronix does not have except on their most expensive oscilloscopes. Both Keysight and Rohde & Schwarz require paying for an upgrade option to get segmented memory. It is a very useful feature to have. Instead of one trigger corresponding to a single filling of the entire memory, the frames (segments) allow a separate screen snapshot for each trigger. The number of frames can be anyway from 2 frames when the memory depth is set to 56M, or as many as 65,000 frames with memory depth set to auto and horizontal set to 2ns/div. That means 65,000 separate triggers (screen shots or frames). Then the navigation knob can be used to either single step through each frame or rapidly play back the frames at various speeds. It is amazing to have that at this price level. The navigation knob is also very beneficial for quickly going through a large number of settings in the menus. Also a “golden” waveform can be used to create a pass/fail mask which can then be used to analyze all the frames and mark only the frames that have waveforms falling outside of the pass/fail mask.
The logic analyzer is one of the main features that I wanted. Keysight MSOX2202 only has 8 digital signals, whereas Rigol has 16. Rigol’s 16 digital inputs are easy to configure and easy to create a parallel bus decode. You can also trigger on various digital patterns. Most of the competition only has a few math functions such as add, subtract, multiply, and FFT. The Rigol has these basic functions and can do many advanced math functions such as integral, differential, square root, log, exp, sine, cosine, and tangent. That is exceptional for an oscilloscope in this price range. Another pet peeve of mine is that the competition is very stingy with the number of reference waveforms that they provide. Tektronix MSO2022 and Keysight MSOX2022 only provide 2 references while Rohde & Schwarz RTB2k provides 4 references. The Rigol MSO2202A-S provides 10 references. Ten should be the standard in my opinion, but only Rigol is doing it.
Tektronix MSO2022 and Keysight MSXO2022 only provide a 1 MO input impedance. Why? Both the Rigol and the Rohde & Schwarz provide either 50 O or 1 MO. Both the Rigol and the Rohde & Schwarz also come with ethernet standard while both the Tektronix and Keysight require purchasing an upgrade module to get this functionality. Many of those standard features on the Rigol are extra features on the competition that start to run up the price of the scope.
There is also a built in dual source wave form generator included in the bundle which can generate 25MHz sine waves or 15MHz square waves. Ramps, pulses, modulated AM or FM, and arbitrary waveforms are also in the generators which come out on two BNC connectors on the back side of the oscilloscope. Overall the Rigol has an incredible set of features at an extremely good price point. So far I only found two things I disliked which are the lack of a 50% trigger level button and the fan noise. While the fan is not extremely loud, it is a constant rumble in the background that should have been a quieter. All in all, I would give the Rigol MSO2202A-S very high marks on all the features that they managed to pack in at this price point.
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MP on
Mar 22, 2018
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Scope works as as advertised mostly
4.0
This scope works well and I like it. The I2C Decode does not work and Rigol tech support told me they are working on a fix with no due date. The wave form generator works well and its nice to have that built in. The probes are cheap but that is normal today, I guess.
What could be better is the documentation and support web site. Some of the documentation (probe for example) is in Chinese.
Rigol should improve the documentation, add a customer forum where their tech guys respond quickly to inquiries, and provide real-time phone and email support. Turnaround time on questions has been poor.
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Dave Rossi on
Mar 11, 2018
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Just what I needed
4.0
This is a decent scope at a great price. There is one more MSO in the clearance. My suggestion, buy it now!!!
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Gary Nalven on
Feb 16, 2018
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Pleasure doing business with you
5.0
I had originally planned on ordering the Rigol MSO1104A-S but, at the advise of Greg via online chat, he recommended the MSO2202A-S instead which is what I ended up ordering. Was extremely pleased and given the current promotion, received all the option bundles. As one of my amateur radio operator peers on Facebook said, "Tequipment rocks!" I agree totally.
And as for the scope iteself, it's not a Tek but then it's a lot cheaper than a Tek but extremely functional and a great addition to my budding fleet of test equipment.
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Ronald Panetta on
Aug 14, 2016
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MSO2202A-S
5.0
Having used Tektronix scopes exclusively, I was a bit leary of the Rigol brand. However, after much research I learned that they offer a good value and are multi ISO certified company.
I ordered the MSO2202A-S and was pleasantly surprised. While the probes themselves may not be as rugged as Tektronix's, where else can you get 350Mhz probes for only $44 - so now I'm not afraid of using them in all situations.
The construction of the scope itself is superb, and it doesn't emit foul odors as some cheap electronics do. The menus are intuitive and too many features to mention.
I would have given it 3 stars if it continued to lock up on me while using cursors or inputing incorrect SCPI commands, but I inquired about newer firmware and was told that there is a new release. I upgraded from 00.03.00.01.03 to 00.03.00.01.04 and all the lockups ceased, even when doing some far-fetched analog/digital mixed operations. This inquiry also allayed any fear about whether the Rigol support organization is useless.
There's a boatload of documents on their website you can download before purchase - you should definitely check it out.
The coolest triggers and serial decodes are included as free trials of about 2000 minutes, and while these options will cost you extra, the price is still unbeatable.
Lastly, even if you never use the signal generator in the -S model for anything else, at a minimum it makes a great companion to learning all scope features with complex wave forms that include FM and AM modulation.
I definitely recommend this unit.
Verified Purchase
SalNYC on
Dec 26, 2014
I found this helpful
(0)
Recommend to a Friend
MSO2202A-S
5.0
Having used Tektronix scopes exclusively, I was a bit leary of the Rigol brand. However, after much research I learned that they offer good value and are multi ISO certified company.
I ordered the MSO2202A-S and was pleasantly surprised. While the probes themselves may not be as rugged as Tektronix's, where else can you get 350Mhz probes for only $44 - so now I'm not afraid of using them in all situations.
The construction of the scope itself is superb, and it doesn't emit foul odors as some cheap electronics do. The menus are intuitive and too many features to mention.
I would have given it 3 stars if it continued to lock up on me while using cursors or inputing incorrect SCPI commands, but I inquired about newer firmware and was told that there is a new release. I upgraded from 00.03.00.01.03 to 00.03.00.01.04 and all the lockups ceased, even when doing some far-fetched analog/digital mixed operations. This inquiry also allayed any fear about whether the Rigol support organization is useless. To get the true version number, save csv to a usb-drive with parameters enabled, then open the txt file that is created along with the csv.
There's a boatload of documents on their website you can download before purchase - you should definitely check it out.
The coolest triggers and serial decodes are included as free trials of about 2000 minutes, and while these options will cost you extra, the price is still unbeatable.
Lastly, even if you never use the signal generator in the -S model for anything else, at a minimum it makes a great companion to learning all scope features with complex wave forms that include FM and AM modulation.
I definitely recommend this unit.
SalNYC on
Dec 26, 2014
I found this helpful
(0)
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