ADS5012h

At first I was sure it was a misprint - a hand-held 100 MHz Scope so reasonably priced - NO, I mean SO VERY LOW priced, with good sensitivity that includes auto-adjustment for sweep speed and amplitude and it triggers consistently on common wave forms? I'll wake up in a minute - pinch pinch, Ahhh... then I started reading reviews and someone who is experienced found a weakness (I REALLY didn't want anyone to find any serious faults <sigh>), and what he described looked like a serious problem, and one I would typically expect as someone who has developed firmware for small devices such as this (but never for a baby oscope THIS cute and well equiped). I left him a comment saying that maybe he had a defective unit. Hey, IT HAPPENS! I've sent things back that failed right out of the box. Not wishing bad luck on anyone (but hoping he had some bad luck), I took a chance and ordered one. I was also very motivated because the 4 channel 350 MHz delayed sweep Tektronix I bought surplus a few years back lit up like a bonfire on my work bench one afternoon a month or two ago - and I'm talking like a propane hot dog cooker run amok! (And I'm STILL looking for parts - it fried several traces on a PCB, and a dozen parts looked more like charcoal than anything else on Earth! (except real charcoal) - Anyway... like I said, I ordered one and took a chance. And for once, it worked out GREAT! It usually doesn't when someone who obviously knows what he is talking about says it doesn't work - and I DO believe him when he says his unit did not work. I can tell he KNOWS scopes.Of course, you know what the first thing I checked was when I got it - I grabbed my dual channel signal generator that does Burst mode and set it up - I went to channel 2 made sure it its was defaulted to 5 volts, went back to channel 1 and set the freq to 100KHz (10 was too low for a decent test) plus I set the duty cycle to 25% to thin the pulses a wee bit, then went to MOD (modulation) and set the type to BURST, and promptly hooked up "The Little Itty Bitty oScope that Could" and hit the AUTO button! And WHAMO, the firmware did its thing and it set up the amplitude and horizontal sweep correctly and I had 5 of the prettiest little pulses you could want solidly on the sceen - BUT WAIT - the very first part of the first pulse was missing... YIKES! (...QUEUE the Ominous music...), yes the trigger circuit locked beautifully, but I wanted - no NEEDED - to see what the other reviewer looked for - the leading edge of the VERY FIRST pulse! Then I remembered what I read in the little booklet - the MODE button toggled the little cursor keys (up, down, left, right) between Voltage/Sweep-speed and Trigger adjust/delay when trigger is in Normal mode - so into NORMAL mode I went and sure enough, the left and right cursor smoothly adjusted the pulse train to the right, and there it was, the leading edge trigger point of the 5 pulse burst (SEE THE IMAGE I uploaded).So Whinnie, Tigger and I have a new toy that works quite well (as advertised) for the 100 acre woods workshop (100 MHz woods?), and we just left Eyore a ways back on the trail asking "Oh Pooh, are you sure it isn't broken? Mine are always broken... always... oh bother."And I thank the other reviewer who did the comprehensive review (I learned something because of his detailed review), and I am sorry his unit didn't work. He may want to give it another try. I am back to poking around in the HF amplifiers I was testing and adjusting, and this little scope is my new Best Friend, at least until they come out with a 500MHz 4 channel unit with control via mental telepathy for 50 bucks! YOWZA!And BTW, the battery REALLY DOES last at last 8 hours! I kid thee not. VERY IMPRESSIVE! But I DO have one REAL CON. The micro-USB charge port is recessed so far, they had to supply a longer than normal USB plug - most regular length ones will not work. But, that this is SO minor I am calling it a feature and not a bug.

There is a great "writeup" on this oscilloscope on "eevblog.com" so folks who need details can read them there on in other good writeups here.My perspective is strictly from the point of "did what I needed without fuss right out of the box."I did not even try basic manual settings, like triggers.I set things to x10 all around, connected it, and poked "auto." Then I poked "Save." Later I would poke "Menu" and "View", pick a saved wave, and poke "Function" then take a picture and turn that into numbers on my PC with "Engauge Digitizer."My goal was a lot like that of the Calfornia reviewer. I needed to understand the quality of the power on my battery backups and generator.It was TOTALLY worth the price for how straightforward that was. Having the unit self-powered simplified the connection, as did the built-in x10 ability and voltage ratings. I STILL used the "one hand in the pocket" approach, but connection was easy.I do not think much of the accuracy of the unit. It did get me pictures of both the battery system inverter output and the generator output. I found it did NOT do well at the battery output, though. To be fair, the battery wave spent a LOT of time at or very near zero, so finding zero was tough for the scope. Display did NOT stabilize as a result, and the frequency value was pretty meaningless.It was just good enough that I could see the battery system was the high-middle-low squarish wave rather than any kind of sine wave, or the ugly waves the cheapest battery systems have. That was what I needed to know.It was also good enough to give a really clear idea of how the high harmonic distortion in my generator distorted the wave form. High enough to cause concern, but low enough to just barely make most gear work.SO, if it's what you NEED, it's a five star item. If you are looking for a device that lives up to its specifications... refer to the eevblog review..

Let me begin by saying this unit is still excellent. Great value for the price, and much more convenient than lugging around a full sized scope everywhere.My only complaint is when I am trying to measure ripple on power supplies.Just today, I was at a customer site where they were powering something using a 24V switching power supply.The unit they were powering requires a ripple of ±1V at 24V.I figured I'd just zoom in on the 24V signal and check the peak-to-peak voltage across it.Unfortunately, the furthest I can zoom in is 5V per division. Any more zoom than that (such as 1V per division) results in the signal being off the screen.Normally, I'd vertically adjust the signal down to appear on the screen, but the scope limits you to a vertical shift of ±4 divisions. So at 1V per division, I can only move the scope down 4V.This means that when my zoom is set to 1V per division, I can see anywhere from 0-8V, so my 24V signal is too far away. Using 5V divisions allows me to see from 0V to 40V, but that's too far zoomed out to notice any ripple in the supply.Zooming in is really only useful if your signal is anchored around (or near) 0V.This seems like there could be a software update to allow more vertical movement. If that was possible, I'd absolutely upgrade my rating from a 4-star to 5-star.