#Rigol dsa815 tg vs. owon xsa1015 generator
#Rigol dsa815 tg vs. owon xsa1015 series

However the big old HP8568B is probably the best bargain out there right now if you can find a reliable one that hasn't been molested inside. The HP8560E etc are even better but still command very high used prices. The 859x analysers are really just for technician use and the 856xA are a class apart in terms of performance

The prices of 15-25year old analysers are very volatile and if you are patient you can often see the 856x models for very similar money to the equivalent in the 859X series. I would suggest the very similar looking HP856x range is now worth paying the extra for.

#Rigol dsa815 tg vs. owon xsa1015 series

I agree the HP859x series analysers are very popular and should give more than adequate performance for most users but in terms of performance per $ I think they are far from the best choice amongst used HP analysers. I do believe that the next 5 years will see a revolution in the availability of low cost test gear that will challenge the performance levels of lab grade gear from just a decade or so ago. It does make you wonder what they could be offering in 5 years' time for similar money. eg an IMD test on a 20kHz span would look very noisy.Д«ut it only costs about ВЈ1000 new and this is quite remarkable. I suspect they chose this wide span to hide the fact the phase noise will spoil the appearance on narrow plots. It would be interesting to see how the IP3 holds up on narrow spans as the glossy brochure shows this test at a 10MHz span. Good enough for most testing but markedly inferior to a regular analyser.

Another plot shows the phase noise to be about -105dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset. It does have a preamp to get the NF down to about 20dB but I would expect the input IP3 will suffer a lot with this switched in. The input IP3 appears to be +12dBm with 0dB attenuation and this initially looks good but the NF is high so the 3rd order IMD dynamic range will be several dB worse than a half decent 'regular' analyser. In terms of signal sensitivity, the data suggests to me that the analyser noise figure with 0dB attenuation is about 40dB and this is about 15dB deafer than many bench analysers. It's so noisy I wonder if the analyser uses the same LO/mix strategy as the higher frequency versions. If you are not worried about close to carrier noise performance then I guess this isn't too much of a limitation but it is probably the noisiest analyser I have ever experienced in this respect. In one of their videos it shows -87dBc/Hz at 10kHz offset at the lower end of the analyser range. I downloaded the Rigol specs in one of their glossy brochures and it does look like the phase noise is going to be quite poor. The first obvious questions were who/what was Rigol and how could this be a real low cost contender? The US office is out of suburban Cleveland This Amateur Radio operator apparently feels the same about this

I also found a thread in another forum for this here That is a fraction of the cost of other TG's of more expensive SA's.

#Rigol dsa815 tg vs. owon xsa1015 generator

The other part that 'floored' me was the cost of a tracking generator (which I consider essential) was only $200 more. Unlike Aten (in a similar price range) this looks like it might have some real quality. I stumbled across this SA and was floored by the price.

Rigol-dsa815-tg vs. owon xsa1015