We sympathize with [learnelectronic’s] statement: “I’m ashamed. I may have bought another oscilloscope.” We get it and we enjoyed watching him tear down the OWON SDS1102. (Video, embedded below.) As you might guess, this is a 100 MHz, two-channel scope, and very similar to many other Chinese scopes you can get inexpensively.
The last ten minutes are so of the video below shows him removing the case. There’s only three little boards inside. One is clearly a power supply. The other two don’t have much on them. There’s a tiny RF shield over one part of the board, so you assume that’s the input section.
The larger board looks like it just mounts the user interface controls. The central board appears to have all the front end and microprocessor components. It is amazing how little there is to see.
The scope runs about $250 or so, new. Like most scopes in this price class it has a relatively small screen, and an 8-bit front end. The claimed sample rate is 1GS/s. However, the screen is larger than a Rigol DS1102E, which is pretty comparable and is about $50 more than the OWON.
We’ve asked readers to help us pick a cheap scope, and found that everyone has their own opinion. The last time we looked at an OWON scope, it was a confusing digital scope impersonating an analog one.
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