Very Surprised!
I am an automotive technician and have used oscilloscopes for diagnostics and troubleshooting for quite some time. I have used many automotive specific versions of oscilloscopes as well as having owned a few myself. I finally had the money to jump on this scope, not really knowing what to expect based on other reviews, mostly related to software issues. I just have to say, wow! For $165, you cannot go wrong. I say this excitedly, probably only as an automotive technician. If there are automotive techs reading this now, don't hesitate, buy this now! It has AC coupling, so you can test all sensors that are AC signal generators (wheel speed sensors, certain cam/crank sensors, alternator ripple, etc.) In DC coupling it works well to check computer output driver circuits, Hall effect sensors and checking output frequency and PWM outputs. It also works with aftermarket BNC secondary ignition pickups, for viewing high KV firing patterns. All of your attachments and test leads that are BNC connectors will work with no issues! (Low or high amp clamps, etc.) The nice thing about this oscope in terms of flexibility during troubleshooting is the time base. Do you know how close you can zoom in to the CAN bus with this thing? Uselessly close! This scope is incredibly flexible and useful as a necessary tool in the modern technicians tool box. It is a deal a technician should not pass up. On the other hand, if I were an electronics engineer using this in a professional environment, I might go with a different brand, something a little more expensive and more well known, just for two reasons: product support and software functions. Hantek builds this unit as such, a cheap oscilloscope. The product support may not be there or as good as you were expecting if you run into issues. The software may lack a few must have features to an electronics engineer that would never be used in the automotive diagnostics world, so I'm not the best candidate to be pointing fingers at this software. But I can tell you that the difference between hantek vs tektronics in build quality, tech support and in depth software/hardware R&D are useless to compare. Tektronics would win hands down as what would would want. You are getting what you are getting. A cheap scope that works well for what it is! My philosophy is: Nothing a few hours spent searching on Google can't fix! This is true of this scope. Learning the ins and outs of the software takes a few hours, my advise is READ EVERYTHING you can before saying it's the software or hardware's fault. You would be surprised at how many times I ran into this while initially working with this scope. Some features are not as cut and dry as you would think. Reading through the software's built in help manual revealed many nice features that were otherwise not outspoken or initially visible. Things like the buffer size, the settings I could choose from were 10k, 32k and 64k. 10k seemed the only one I could choose. Nowhere in the manual says that if FFT is on, 10k is the only option. Disable FFT, you unlock 32k per channel. Disable channel 2, you can use 32k x 2 to give you 64k of total buffer size for 1 channel. Numbers and read outs are also minimal on the main screen, that is until you start adding math functions everywhere! You can enable an incredible number of min/max/avg, etc. readouts to give you powerful DMM functionality. At first I honestly didn't like the software, but I kept on reading and tinkering and eventually found out that a feature was there, hidden behind something else where you would never expect it to be. By all means if you hate reading, pay $5000 for a scope that gives you access to a live troubleshooting person 24/7. I don't have that kind of money, so I will stick to my reading! Thank you hantek for building this product! I am going to buy a few more soon, as I can pile them together to add more channels!Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
