OWON 14bit XDS3202A Oscilloscope Unboxing & First Impressions
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2017
- An unboxing anf first impression of the OWON 14bit XDS3202A Oscilloscope.
Note, this was shot as single take for the 2nd channel, but thought it might be better off here but with no EEVblog number. It is NOT a review. If you don't like unboxings and just bumbling around with the scope the first time and ranting then please don't watch it.
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dunno about the scope, but dave's certainly triggered.
At least Daves trigger input seems to work ;)
lol
I think he may be a little butt-hurt how much value these Chinese brands can put into their products compared to Western brands. I mean I used to love his reviews but this is unhelpful. He clearly is into this looking for faults then ridiculing them, instead of comparing this to similarly priced Western brand scopes. Which practically don't even exist. And now before you ask, yes, I am triggered too haha.
Funny, I had an ad for the fast boot time of a Rohde&Schwarz right before this video.
Nice to see the battery compartment !
I sure wish the "low end" 'scopes would move to at least a 10 bit A-to-D.
Picked one up brand new with all decoding options, waveform gen, multimeter. £300 3 years ago. Still going strong. No complaints. Thanks for crashing the price!
I don't think I would pay even that much for a half baked product with a million bugs, unimplemented features, and a garbage noise figure. What's the point of 14 bits when your noise floor is that high?
These are about the only online scope reviews from an engineer who really knows how to work one.
Hold on power button probably to stop it from discharge battery by accidently turning thing on i guess
All battery powered stuff has to add measures to stop it starting accidentally, just look at your phone.
it should auto disable that function if its on ac or at least have an option to manually disable
Power button is already recessed
Yeah that seems kinda obvious. Dunno how Dave missed that
The only channel with a watch worthy unboxing
Before watching the whole video: I guess this oscilloscope uses the HMCAD1520 ADC, the slightly better version of the HMCAD1511 which is used in a lot budget oscilloscopes. The HMCAD1520 can run in 8-bit, 12-bit and 14-bit modes, but the sample rate goes down at higher resolutions.
Yep, pretty sure you are right. Exact fit to the specs.
Some obvious things: 1. Trigger and X axis are closely related, and in XY mode, it makes a lot of sense for the X input to have controls matching and lining up with the Y controls. Trigger settings can obviously use either the 3rd, 1st or maybe 2nd channel.
2. Those soft turn buttons are obviously not doubling as push buttons, they would probably jump jump like 10 degrees on each push. But there should be a more obvious enter/ok button near the misc turner.
3. Maybe each decodable protocol requires a specific choice of input channels, such as Tx, Rx, RTS or similar.
4. Wonder if it's really 10 bits plus oversampling to get 14 bits.
It might be crap, but I'd gladly take it and put it to use. It may not be good, but it's better than nothing. Especially for someone on disability who loves electronics and lacks any type of scope!
Mike Hayes Same here..
I doubt it has a real 14bit ADC. Perhaps, it's only averaging, which can explain weird "breathing" look of that waveform.
But Dave, I think sometimes you criticize it too much.
its owon, they usually dont lie.
Do I detect a bias against OWON scopes??? I think OWON deserves some credit here! They market a scope and quickly send it to Dave to tell them all the problems and how to fix it!!!
I hate having to support a scope's back while pushing buttons! That is *really annoying* while you are trying to work.
18:05 - and the DMM digits jumping left and right... WTF.
I mean it's great to be thin for portable work but most people use a scope in a fixed location so maybe they should include a large back support arm that would prevent it from tipping over. It would be an easy fix and addition at very low cost.
ElmerFuddGun , I find that very funny. Never used any scope just only with the tip of my finger. Even not the old CRT ones. Never really seen it as an issue, and if it's an issue, it's super easy to fix.
Bart B - Well for me I prefer to just use my first finger and thumb while resting my arm on the desk. If I am standing and reaching down to the scope my hand may rest on the top. But to each their own. I have 2 analog and 1 digital and that's the way I like to work it. In school and work it was the same for most people that I saw. If the scope is on a shelf it is even more so, sometimes resting my fingers on the shelf under the scope while reaching up to the dials.
Same for me. I don't think I have ever 'not' used a scope with just pokey fingers. If I bought a scope and it couldn't support itself when I pressed the buttons, I literally would just return it and find something else. I move my scopes around quite a lot, and I don't want to re-invent a way to stop it from tipping over every time I put it on a new table or bench, that's just ridiculous... These are working devices, not table ornaments. And they sure should function as such.
User interface hell is my first impression. Thanks for the show.
why just read the user manual that will clear most of things as simple as that
I have an Owon and Rigol scope. When I need a scope I almost always use the Owon. It is so easy to use in comparison. As a consequence I now have a third scope and it's another Owon. Nice big display and I automatically cup my hand over the top so have no tilting problems. I know Dave does not like Owons and it shows.
Where do you send it if it needs service? Siglent and Rigol both have offices here in the US.
I quite like the hold down to turn on thing. Especially on a battery. Don't want it accidently turning on unattended.
'Im glad they haven't asked me to review anything, would be hard to find any good points to cover. Test that 50ohm input to see if it is actually switching a load in, it may not be.
The isolation of it being self contained battery powered is very usefull in industial control troubleshootong. I wish the Siglent / Rigol's had that option...
The yellow connector is composite out so you can plug it into your Betamax for data logging.
my first scope was an owon, it was just a rebranded tec but it was nice and support was good ... but they are more or less niche right now with some good portable scopes, battery option in many scopes and now a 14 bit converter
why does the scope even have a touch screen if all the controls are button operated.
Do R/C! It's like it's their first try at touch. I mean, fair enough, really, maybe eventually you could have unified software that handles both touch only, control only, and hybrid devices.
Considering its portable with a battery, the power button hold is probably a nice feature. Otherwise you'd accidentally power it on by bumping the button in transit.
This happened to me a whole bunch of times with an SDS7102. In the end, I started removing the power button before packing the scope.
Can someone from China explain something: How is it possible that a multimillion company can't hire someone that speaks (writes) proper English? I bet I could do a better job by cleaning up a "google translate" Chinese -> English translation.
From experience - most companies just don't care.
Lmao That question confused me for years
Thank you for this very informative video (even 2 years later). What OSC would you recommend for an electronic hobbyist around 300€ (350$), spending more wouldn't be reasonable to me, it is just a hobby but if I can get something pretty decent for that price... :)
Anyone else noticed that most of the issues he finds (with this brand in particular) is because he has done something silly or overlooked the settings he has previously changed? For example he cannot turn off the 20M bandwidth limit because he has his V/div too low and then blames the scope
AND I am a bit suspicious about some reviews!
@@grumss9248 actually i started to notice the same thing, extreamly picky, i guess in the looks of the equipment it is kinda eh ok, but he does some chaotic shit to prove his points which annoys me sometimes
I'm wondering if these XDS3xxx series scopes are any better now? Any planed review with OWON scopes, hmm?
I love that there is a Rigol in the background. I can almost hear it laughing.
many of us have noticed that there is ALWAYS a Rigol in the background... (mmm i wonder)
And there was me thinking that my Rigol DS4024 had a few issues, that has now made my day :)
Didn't check all the comments and I'm not completely defending this brand, but the reason for the delayed power on is obvious. If it is designed to be used on a battery pack for portable use, then it has the hold power to prevent accidental powering on when bouncing around with the rest of your stuff I'd imagine.
I agree with this one. The older SDS series used a really big mechanical switch as the "soft" power button, but it had the tendency to turn in in transportation.
Dave did not take it apart !
It is hard to imagine the analog front-end design would be clean enough to take advantage of a 14bit ADC. Look forward to seeing the shakedown of this one.
20:23 - seing those pulsating symmetric figures on the screen makes me thinking of that Barba-family.
I have some old miniature obstruction spanner wrenches with "Lilliput" stamped on it which was a tounge-in-cheek reference to Gulliver's Travels because they were extremely small compared to a normal spanner. Sort of a strange name to give a company though.
Lilliput actually is a chinese manufacturer of small LCD-Screen (or have been abou 10 years ago) - I remember them offering 7" VGA-Touchscreens for around 300USD - which was a bargin in the old days... I used them for my Car-PC the time then.
The founder must have been a big Jonathan Swift fan.
I bought a broken Owon on Ebay, just to try to fix it. i was able to get it working, but did not need a tenth scope. I donated it to a local tech. school. After about 2 weeks, they offered it back to me!
LOL....Thats bad !
Dave, your sound is visible on the scope around 14:00 - a kind of bug? missing shield?
Many scopes force BW limit at the lowest mv/div setting - maybe that's why you couldn't set full bandwidth on ch2
Could be, need to check this.
mikeselectricstuff it looked to me like it might be the 50 ohm option - high bandwidth only on 1M
which is ridiculous as the 50 ohm option is generally only used for high bandwidth signals where reflections are an issue!
It's so funny how clunky Dave is while trying to use a touch screen and a device without reading directions. I would say this is a 50-50 on this review. 50% Dave's old school clunkiness and 50% the scopes firmware. As for the humor scale, I give 100% to Dave. LMAO. great video.
Hi, Great videos by the way. Its been a while i have not used an Oscilloscope. I am considering buying this scope,
OWON XDS3104E Digital Oscilloscope. Is 100 Mhz sufficient for most applications or should i consider 200 Mhz?
It`s sufficient for most applications.
Ha. I was just today reading a programming guide that had "cymometer" in it. No idea what that was, so looked it up.
Glad to know that I'm not the only one, Dave! 😀
+boggisthecat David and I were both going WTF
EEVblog
Yes, but I was a bit surprised as I have done electrical metrology work for going on twenty-five years now. Very weird that they are using that term; "cymometer" -- perhaps it is a preferred technical term that the Chinese have latched onto?
(Articles talk about using cymometers in telegraphy, so it isn't a new term.)
This is actually quite common. Language A imports words from language B, then they go their separate ways. Internet comes and suddenly, all B-language words in language A sound really strange to native speakers of language B, because they were stuck in time, while the rest of the language B evolved. Some examples: Televisor, condenser, Frigidaire.
Андреја Костић
Sure, but you have to make sure that colloquial terms are not inadvertently used -- 'Frigidaire' is a brand (like 'Hoover' for a vacuum cleaner), so shouldn't be used in any commercial material.
'Cymometer' is an outdated technical term, but possibly this is still the preferred translation from technical Chinese. I would have thought that they would have noted that 'frequency counter' has been used in English for decades now, so it seems odd that it has cropped up.
$1300 USD for that? I expected a price of $600-$800. Far better out there for that price.
can buy a basic rigol or tektronix scope for $600 and those are great scope for a beginner such as myself
While it's definitely a lower value scope, I just got a Keysight 1052 for $200 and for my needs I'm happy with it, at least it doesn't fall over!
Just curious, can the firmware be updated on the scope? If so is the unit running the newest firmware?
Funny how they use a fancy, obscure word like cymometer instead of calling it a frequency counter just to make the thing seem more important and feature-packed than it is.
No one's doing much these days with Hantek. I've heard they've been getting better.
I could be excited if it had a transistor tester.
I hate when he hates something before even getting it out of the box (Already started at N-in-1) Perhaps I have to go somewhere else if I want an unbiased review. :(
Alright. After watching the whole stuff yes, it has some major issues. But while he sometimes mentions it is a budget 14bit scope, it is unfair to compare this to top brand, many times more expensive scopes. I hope they are going to update the firmware soon as that is a major let-down.
Its much better than Dave lets on. He is very biased against any Chinese scope that isnt a Rigol. I got the XDS 3120A, 100MHz 12 bit from Amazon for $559 with every option except the AWG. I do mostly analog (audio) work, so I chose it for the 12 bit resolution, which is much nicer than the 8 bit of most scopes. Dave just needs to thumb through the manual before going open loop on the scope.
I agree. And he tends to be biased towards old big brands like HP erm... Agilent... Damn! I mean Keysight! Which is fine, we all have our preferences, but as a reviewer, and someone inspiring thousands of amateurs he should have more unbiased, and should do more positive reviews of cheap gear for amateurs and hobbyists. It is just the same old "Dave show", banging on the same old stuff, and getting exactly that: old. I am a happy owner of an SDS7102V. Yes, a piece of crap compared to 3x more expensive stuff, but no one said the original VW was crap because if wasn't a Porsche! :( And I have to say I do not need anything better really. The fast and large memory is great, the bandwidth and noise is great too. Yes, it would be nice to have a faster update rate and perhaps phosphor simulation, but I just can not honestly justify the cost of an upgrade.I do think it is the right tool for my needs, and I should not be made feel crap for that! And still, a lot less crap than the UNI-T I owned before, which was still adequate for my needs, but I am glad I upgraded. I sold that well and got this cheap (open box) so it barely cost me anything. (Uni-T meters and the UT81B are great though imho)
If you are a professional working for $50 an hour, you obviously can not afford to fiddle around with cheap stuff and buggy firmware, but you clearly don't have to. However I though his channel was more targeted towards amateurs and hobbyists. I am a bit disappointed. Rant over.
I havent found any bugs in the XDS3102A that I have. Everything seems to work as expected. I love the large 800 X 600 display. Its super sharp, with inky blacks. I cant really comment on its use for digital, since I an analog person, but for my needs, it fits the bill very well. I actually thing it looks fine as well. The constant rant about its looks seems puzzling to me, as virtually all Chinese scopes in this price range look pretty much the same to me. Most of his rants seem to make little sense.
Szabolcs Mate
2 years later but still a valuable comment. Tx!
@@ronshaw80 He is pandering to his audience. Most of the posters on his EEV blog forum are total electro-snobs. Not everyone can or wants to buy top level equipment for what is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby.
Anyone with a fledgling interest should give his channel and website a wide berth.
Have your tried if the 50Ohms affect the Bandwidth settings?
Yeah, the design is horrendous. Fisher-Price.
Fisher-Price is quite nicely designed.
The overall box doesn't look too terrible, it's just the front face labels and button placements that are screwed up. Looks much better than the GW-Instek latest line.
The owon tao3104a seems to be this same build, 4 channel, but in a tablet form; and for half the price. It would be awesome to see you get your hands on that one. 14bit just the same. 100Mhz, 45M memory depth, 1GSa/s, etc. etc. There is only one English video about it on youtube.
LOL, poor guys... looking forward for further teardown
Yea, that'd be rough as a daily use scope.
It looks like there are legs that slide out the back. Try to pull the back legs out.
Oops, did I miss that?
In what world does that look like they slide out? Single molded plastic with the back rubbers just affixed there.
I have a small owon hand held scope, it works fine for viewing basic stuff
Awesome experience
Promising sounding hardware let down by crappy software once again. Not surprising coming from Owon.
I bet the long boot times are because its running some very poorly optimized version of Linux on an under powered processor, I really want to see a tear down of this thing just to see what its running inside
It's probably not even Linux. It's probably some sort of RISC system.
@@fermiLiquidDrinker not a linux... but a sort of RISC ? RISC is a CPU architecture, LINUX is an OS based on UNIX which may be able to run on a RISC architecture aswell... depending of the version...
the ch1 led color don't even match the channel color!!! fail
I'll have it! I really don't know any better, can't afford a better one anyway. I got heaps of time to figure that shit out
WoW! This video made me SOOOooOoo crunchy! Thank you
Had an SDS7102 before, and have a VDS3102L. The only thing I can say about Owon is their basic function is good, very simple and very basic, but seems like as soon as they try to add new features, things start to go buggy.
I have the SSO8192V and can relate similarly. Basic function at a good price with some extras. The LAN / USB software is a little janky but intriguing to control the scope remotely. How is the PC oscilloscope? Does it use the same software as the SDS7102?
Never used my 7102 with computer, so I can't answer. VDS3102's functions are pretty much exactly the same as SDS7102, just without a screen and buttons.
10Mpts storage is buggy due to excessively slow USB transfer for whatever reason, other features are okay.
Given how iffy the rest of this scope is, I wonder if it *actually* uses 14-bit converters? It totally looks like software-based high resolution mode since the sample rate drops off. Maybe they're just 1GS/s 8-bit converters which always run at their max possible sample rate, and the rest is done in DSP or maybe even some integrated ADC feature? I'd test if the shortest timebase setting is the same in 8/12/14-bit modes and whether signals look correct at different timebase extremes. That modulated heartbeat effect seems like another hint that some averaging may be taking place...
wish i could even get one scope like any you get. how do you get so many of these electronic parts and gizmos. feels like an eternity for me to scrimp and save for a simple power supply. you must make millions.
And to follow up on this. what i do have for a scope is old. a Gould 1604. And i got that from an Amateur Operator in the area after a school found it in their storage. That is the only way I can enjoy some scope stuff but wonder if it may need aligned but have no way to do that either. but I am still very jealous of you.
Glad I bought a Rigol DS1104Z-S Plus :-)
Definitely the 1Mohm versus 50ohm not letting him switch to the Full band mode.
ground on the probes connected together or separate independent?
земля на щупах соединены вместе или раздельная независимая?
"Darta logging"
Love the aussie accent !
You can tell it's gonna be a rant by Dave's enthusiasm. lol
Do yourselves a favor and read lots of forums! People that know their stuff and are not "so influenced" by the commercial side are our real friend! Some of the Owon stuff has been proven to be very good at some things! (never hear that on this channel)
even his OWN forum has better Reviews on the owon stuff than he does
Hey Dave, could you take another look at the scope with the most recent firmware? I've heard they improved quite a lot on the annoying software glitches...
Earlier Owon models had serious problems with aliasing. Just wondered if they'd improved on that.
I'd like a scope with more than 8-bit resolution for the sale of less jagginess on traces. Not if it means losing so much on sample rate though. 10-bit whilst keeping 1GHz/channel sample rate would be a good compromise.
Other thing, people expect meter leads to be earth-free, whilst scopes (for some historical reason) usually have earthed inputs. Just wondered if the DMM inputs are isolated from earth?
Can you share which earlier models exactly had the aliasing issues? Were they in the SDS series, the older PDS, or the portable ones?
Owon Hung Low
The back reads "Made in China" at 5:20
+Nige C
Dave worked for Altium and it doesn't look like he's very bitter when using their software. They even used Dave's pcb ruler design in their New Year cards and gave Dave a license for Altium Design.
Communist New Year cards?
You better search your house and remove everything that's made in China before it turns you into a communist.
+Barry
I was replying to an American (Nige C) who said all sorts of negative things about Chinese labor and Altium moving there. He deleted his comments, probably after he figured they came over as arrogant and/or paranoid. Like calling Altium's NY cards Communist.
my first modern DSO was Owon... Owon never again, wasn't cheap either!
Why the hell is CH1 Button illuminated Red when the trace is Yellow?
Better than UNI-T Oscilloscopes(the new phosphor screen)(? What do you think about it?
If your are wondering. HE KEEPS ALL the things sent to him. All youtuber reviewers do. Sometimes they sell them.
please based on your knowledge which one should i buy the hantek DSO4102C or the rigol DS1102Z
Quick question, i know this is unrelated to the video but i want to know what do i search on ebay to find old vintage electronics and computers for cheap. I have been looking for hours and all i find are overpriced computers and individual boards. Please help!
These scopes are also sold under the "PeakTech" brand - at least here in Germany.
That "Persistence" mode is for those hours when you are not doing anything productive. Just relax, put it on, have some music on and enjoy the CoLorS :D
What is your best preference for an oscilloscope
@eevblog IMHO if it's worth the main channel, you should put a number on it ;)
Fair enough comment.
I have run into an unknown acronym. The schematic diagram looks like an inductor but the letters next to it are FL. Would you happen to know what FL is? All i can come up with is fusible inductor, but i don't think there is such a monster. I've also seen it called a filter. Info on schematic 240-ohm-0.2a-0.8-ohm. Part type SMD 0201-2
Make Stuff
Yep, it is probably a filter inductor, the type that gets lossy at high frequencies to suppress EMC type noise. Normal inductors try not to be lossy, just reactive. The 240 ohm is the reactive impedance at HF. The other two values are DC characteristics. It won't do its job if you exceed the DC current as the core material may saturate. The other number is not the part number.. If it's a 0201, it's very very small - with two connections
Our university has a couple of these and they all suck (not exactly the same model), , Apparently some noob bought those ones for the lab getting amazed by the size of the screen -_-
we have these at college, they are nice to use, if you know how. of course it isnt a 20k$ scope, but for what they are worth these are great
I think the guys at ?Lilliput? just got stuck with "innovation" at some point and just decided to send the device to Dave so he would sort out all the flaws, which he did! :)
Of course, blue ch2 button backlight is blue and yellow ch1 button backlight is ... I see it's like red...
Looks like a nice 14bit scope. However, I would like to see it in action on a circuit board repair. 😎 Thanks.
you really hate owon oscilloscope jajaja , i worked with one . dont really like at all . but my poor companie dont can pay other one and do the job . when i starter my own company i buy an agilent one and now im much more productivity than before save me alot of time . entire weeks in years of working . really owon oscilloscopes make you do things in hard way .
OWNO!
ApexMike the best comment by far xD
Why even put a dmm on a scope? I mean, everyone serious enough to need an oscilloscope will have at least a half decent multimeter anyway.
Well,if you needed a portable 'scope with a 14-bit ADC this would work. Sort of. But if that were the intended market I'd expect a handheld form factor.
Need some help I was going to buy owon xds3104E 4 channel 100 mhz , and I had in my mind also the unit UPO2104CS ultra phosphor supposedly technology. Is xds3104E crappy as it has 8 bit vertical resolution? Many help advices apreciatted.
Dave always criticism OWON. The basic function is good, and there is a little bug but it can be fixed by firmware updated.
Thanks my friend, I already bought XDS3104E and I´m dissapointed as the oscilloscope doesn´t show the multi gradient which is Owon´s digital phosphor. I see the waverform without any intensity like competitors. Can you help me find a better firmware if you have a contact at Owon?. What do you think about XDS3104E I even payed for protocol decoding and I thought it was going to have CAN included and only enabled SPI i2c and rs232. I'm really dissapointed. But for the most I'm dissapointed because it doesn't show the waveform intensity as digital phoshpor's other Owon competitors. Can you contact me so we can talk a bit more? Add me to whatsapp please +54 9 11 4095 9090
XDS3104E E it's 8-bits.
What's the ENOB tho?
Don't turn it on, take it apaaht! Thanks, DJ
whats the adc part number, or is it an asic? looks like android judging by boot.
Siglent has a recent 200mhz scope, 2 channels, cheap. Imv sensitivity, 1mega point fft.
I guess the next version will be fine ;)
What's two bits between friends, right? :)
Seems like the only thought in the UI was the flash screen. Almost bought one until I came here.
So the Rigol is still the #1 pick for homegamers?
or maybe the keysight?
J Bender i guess I haven't seen that episode yet. I'll look for it.
But the price difference between two similar of those scopes had to be huge?