This is a placeholder topic for “Rigol DHO-804 Oscilloscope” comments.
DHO-804 Oscilloscopes 70MHz, 4CH, 1.25GS/s, 12 BIT…
Read moreWhat scope would you recomend for Audio and video repairs both analog and digital
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Hey there, @RAYMOND316328,
The Rigol range oscilloscopes are a pretty solid contender for bench repair work.
If you could tell us the sort of gear you’d most likely find yourself repairing, i.e. audio amps, HDMI-era boards, what have you, that’ll allow us to narrow down on the exact model for your work.
I use this for my audio gear. 
It’s great. The UI is… interesting.
However the small desk footprint is lovely and the specs are more than adequate for audio and video.
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Hi Raymond
Rigol:
Pretty good quality brand. Widely available at competitive pricing. This brand has been around a long time.
4 analog inputs:
You would probably mostly use 2 maximum but 4 does no harm and could be useful on some occasions.
Bandwidth 70Mhz:
Should be plenty enough. Although 100Mhz sounds better for marketing a lot of the time something like 25Mhz is adequate. I might point out that this bandwidth is only valid if you have a probe that is capable of this and the probe and input is switched to 10:1. And most importantly the probe has to be adjusted properly. The sensitivity is stated at 500µV but this only achievable at 1:1 probe/input settings and the bandwidth will be reduced possibly quite drastically.
All up I think this is fairly good value for the price which could almost be considered “budget”. There are lots of oscilloscopes around at vastly different pricing and some beautiful instruments among them unfortunately at many thousands of $$
During my working life I had the pleasure of using some of these very high end instruments and it really was a pleasure to go to work and get my hands on some of it. For instance a very very nice HP spectrum analyser. I think the company I was contracting to at the time paid $160000 second hand along with the very important calibration certificate.
I assume from this you have had minimal oscilloscope experience or you probably would not be asking the question.
I would urge you to start slowly and build up. Don’t go rushing off measuring 30, 40 60 Mhz and expect nice results. There are many factors at play when getting up in frequency. Read the instruction book and specs. Keep playing with your instrument and get to know it. There are probably functions that you may never use. Don’t worry about that just be aware of what is there. Have a good play. You won’t hurt it unless you apply over voltage to an input.
As I say, keep playing with this instrument and believe me you will eventually find it to be the most useful instrument you have and wonder what you did without it.
Cheers Bob
