Cheap Oscilloscope Is… Well… Cheap

We always enjoy watching [Kerry Wong] put an oscilloscope through its paces. His recent video is looking at a very inexpensive FNIRSI 1014D ‘scope that you can also find rebranded. You can usually find these for well under $200 at the usual places. Can you get a reasonable scope for that cost? [Kerry] has a list of issues with the scope ranging from short memory depth to low sensitivity. He did, however, like that it is USB powered so it can be operated from a common battery pack, which would make it truly floating.

The ‘scope looks like a lot of other inexpensive ‘scopes, but you can see some concessions to price. For example, the encoder knobs don’t have a push button function, making the scope more difficult to operate. While the specs are relatively modest, [Kerry] wasn’t sure the instrument was even living up to them.

The scope did start up fast and had responsive controls, which is good. There were some display oddities as the horizontal sweep changed. The scope claims to have 100 MHz bandwidth. However, it appears this is vastly overstated. In addition, there was some measurement offset as frequency increased.

The teardown shows there isn’t much on board and the design doesn’t seem very sophisticated. Granted, the scope is cheap, but maybe it is just too cheap. [Kerry] wasn’t impressed and, from what we saw, we weren’t either. His exact quote was: “I wouldn’t touch this ‘scope with a ten-foot pole.”

Last time we checked in with [Kerry], he was looking at cheap ‘scope meters which fared better for a similar price. It is amazing how much times have changed for cheap ‘scopes.