Rigol DS1052E Digital Storage Oscilloscope, 2 Channel, 50 MHz Bandwidth

If you are looking for a 50MHz general purpose digital oscilloscope, this would seem to be an excellent choice from my experience so far. It is astonishingly good value for money in my opinion. I can't comment on its long term reliability yet for obvious reasons (!) but it seems well built. It is easy to use and does everything I had hoped it would. You might still want to keep a quality analog oscilloscope around too (for higher bandwidth, measurement flexibility and the much higher "update rate" I'm hanging on to my Tektronix 7834, but the Rigol will do most of what I need).You can also control the scope from a computer via USB, although I haven't made use of that facility yet.The only issue I had was that the scope came with a European mains lead. My advice is to discard this and use a UK mains lead as soon as you unpack the box, unless you are very sure you have a European to UK adapter that includes the earth pin. As stated clearly in the manual, the device *must* be grounded, otherwise you will find the ground side of the input BNCs floating at around 100VAC with respect to mains ground!In my opinion, to get a significantly better digital oscilloscope (e.g. one with a faster update rate for a more "analog" experience) you would need to spend an order of magnitude more money. For hobbyists (like me) this device seems like a very good way to go.

Good quality, easy to use, remarkable value. 50MHz bandwidth is more than I needed, so I went for this scope rather than others with a higher bandwidth for the same sort of price because I valued the excellent user interface and functionality over raw performance. This decision has proved its worth and I am extremely happy with the scope.

The oscilloscope is great value. However, as others have stated, you should recycle or hide the supplied 2-pin European mains lead and UK adapter and use a suitably fused UK lead that has a connected earth pin instead. Docking one star. I'm not sure if Amazon are breaking legal regulations for the sale of electrical goods to the UK market. Luckily, I have a few suitable IEC C13 leads to spare.

Excellent oscilloscope and remarkably good value for money. The menu system is easy to use and all controls are positive. a very well made piece of equipment. A bandwidth check has shown that it exceeds the specification of 50 MHz by a long way. The only thing I don't like is having only one set of of controls for the two channels but most digital scopes seem to be like that now. I would definitely recommend this product.

My heart sank when I opened the box only to discover the User Manual was a few pages written entirely in Chinese! A very comprehensive manual was available to download and revealed the many functions this instrument provides. The design team have obviously given much thought to making this oscilloscope very user friendly. Don't be put off by the low price as I almost was. This is a very nicely produced instrument and in my opinion is a genuine good buy.

As a serious amateur, this unit is spot on- it seems to have excellent build quality and all the features one can imagine. Annoyingly there is no instruction manual nor any on line instruction link that I can see, but I am working it out as I go.

I started using the old Cossor 1035 twin-beam 'scope - and moved over to a "modern" analogue Farnell scope which has done excellent service over the last 40 years. This one is as far ahead of the Farnell as the Farnell was ahead of the pre-war Cossor.Quite amazing; not only in what it does, but in the "feel" quality of all the controls and the stability of the triggering and trace.In agreeing with other 5-star reviewers I will let them eulogise over the technical aspects - oh - I didn't find the fan unduly noisy.

You're not buying a multi thousand pound scope that will deliver high level results. You're buying an amateur / general purpose scope for non critical applications. At that job the Rigol is amazing, given it's cost and offers facilities that make it very versatile and it can be expanded into over time. I've not had it long enough to comment on long term performance but so far it's met and exceeded all my expectations.