Rohde & Schwarz RTB2004 First impressions & teardown 

The fact that the case honeycomb pattern lines up perfectly with the PSU mesh makes me happy.

Thank you for this. We spent a day on it. The best part for me was when you put a sine form up toward the end. The kids actually yelled out their recognition. Nice touch. Simple little things. You are a genius. Part of that is an intuitive ability to reach open minds.

I really like the idea with the coloured rings behind the multifunction knobs. It is certainly better than a scope that shows a number on screen representing which channel is currently selected

I like it. Thanks for your time, Mike. Great presentation.

Very nice review. Can't wait to see Mike's follow-up on the features. It seems a smart idea to include the logic analyser in the package.

Nice serious review. I found that you can also use a mouse, via the front panel USB connector, to drive the scope. On the one I got, I also found a very cool feature using "MTP" over the device USB connector on the rear of the scope to quickly capture screen shots...or just drag and drop into Powerpoint from my PC. I can also use the same capability to drag and drop live data into Excel. I haven't previously seen this capability on a scope.

I find electronics equipment reviews so mesmerizing

Great review. You've done a very nice job of conveying the feature set in a way that the features page at R&S just doesn't achieve.

I like the idea of a multi-part review

R&S do make absolutely fantastic gear. I have a HMO3054 but I gotta admit I'm drooling over this new RTB2004 that's a 1/3 of the price, especially the 10" screen! I wish R&S would do more to get their gear out there into the hobbyists hands rather than the usual Agilent/Keysight/Tektronix bandwagon.

that loop above the kensington lock is probably just an anchor point for tying the power cable with a zipcord. I've had rack servers with something similar

Nice review Mike. Looks like a fine instrument despite a few little things here and there. Those holes are quite large on the back. Any shop clipping pins or leads, using solder suckers, etc. would all produce debris big enough to bounce right in and short something out. Good ideas on the battery power and lead storage. Looks like it could use a case or a front panel cover as well.

How does it cope with loads of data on the screen? I recently used my MSO to decode the data going to a 640x480 LCD panel and could zoom in and see individual dot data. Very cool.

Excellent video!

Can you do a video on how well it works as a spectrum analyzer? I imagine that with 2 extra bits on the ADC it might work out pretty well?

These XP-Power off the shelf power supplies are ok. I got a bunch of ACS and ACT 50W power supplies out in the field since 2002. They are almost identical in size and connector arrangement. They use the same Nippon Chemicon capacitor. They are active 24/7/365 at about 40°C ambient. None of that has failed yet, after 15 years. I can't complain.

Thanks for the well done presentation. If possible, I would like to see some feature usability, and signal quality comparison to the R&S HMO line. @R&S: I think Europe needs a special offer for early adopters, too. ;-)

surface mount wago clamps, love it!

The Windows-based RTE-Series from Rohde&Schwarz offers the ability to beep (and do other stuff) on trigger. But it also costs about 3 times as much :)

* droooooool * For the battery conversion, what would you do with the AC trigger? I have wondered if it makes sense to pick up some mains frequency from the air around you... What I would like to see is how good it (and its FFT9 might be for characterizing components and filters. With other good quality scopes I have seen software options to e.g. show IV scopes, bode plots etc. and kinda use them like a low bandwidth SA with TG

I don't know if it's true for this but in my experience a missing origin is usually a guarantee of junk.

What about aliasing? I mean there is a nice feature i like on a Yokogawa DLM2024 or such that you can low pass the input which is done in the digital domain with the ADC always operating at full sample rate but before the limited SR to memory, so you can use a arbitrary low sample rate but can control aliasing by the digital filter. Of course, this has restrictions, there might be clipping in the ADC but then the analog 20MHz BW limit may help. Anyway it looks like a brilliant scope, looking forward to further evaluation. What about doing a real world use case, where you bring up a new circuit or debug something and document your experience and learning curve with this scope? And then you might go into exploring some details because you get reminded... Of course, you have to compress this and do a kind of voice over.

23:30 Those MPS devices work at about 1 to 2 MHz (Fixed at 1.2MHz for the MPM3630, but with ext clock it can run from 1MHz to 2MHz). Also the MPM3630 is only 18V in maximum, so it can't do 24V in, but the MPM3620 can do 24V (It's 2A out instead of 3A out, at has a fixed clock at 2MHz). 29:30 LOL, I don't have any complaints about XPpower, though I haven't used their PSUs that much. I stick with Delta. (Just got a Delta MDS-040APS24 BA the other day. It's a nice little 40W 24V smps, medical grade, 77x51x23mm open-frame, for only $15 on Digikey! It has Nichicon and NCC capacitors. Only complaint is that the solder job looks so-so. It's nice and shiny, but it looks like there might be a bad joint or two. Interestingly it has not one but two mains fuses, one on each lead. Might be a medical grade thing? IDK ...)

Seems like a good mod would be to tape a mesh onto those vents.

You mentioned it very briefly but I guess one interesting point for review is the 10 bit ADC. Seems like the new hyped feature for a lot of scopes..

Can it do a waterfall plot with its fft ?

btw fast powerup and all the advantages over keysight are probably due to not using embeded windows, but linux inside

Do you know if the promo package includes the MSO cables, or if those are a separate purchase? I'm seriously considering getting one of these. That promo price is just too good to pass up, and this seems to beat the 4000 series Rigol pretty handily.

We use copper shielding cans at work. The grey beards tell me it's because copper gives much better em shielding than mu metal above a few hundred KHz.

It is probably identical screen to some iPads, and this is why it strange shape and glass in front. Otherwise, awesome from hardware side. Software looks also interesting, definitively better than other scopes on the market.

So 1mV per division was with probes in x10 mode? I suppose it had to be to get 300MHz. What about in x1? No BNC adapter thingy for the probes? I like those.

is it possible to hack bandwidth and software options?

neat scope.

Three wires to the fan, PWM controlled? You mentioned it was very quiet, does this change if you heat it up a bit? EDIT; Watched a bit more, third wire just RPM sense to tell if the fan is broken?

Can the board run 'headless' without screen and controls only using the ethernet connection and the web interface? Could be a interesting product, just supply cooling and 12v. and you have a very decent headless scope. (Might explain the option for a backup battery on the main pcb?)

I am planning to buy a rtb2002. Therefore, a question: Can the stored waveforms be used externally? I would be very happy if you could send me such a file (upload on www.xup.in) so I can test.

Nice, thanks for your time. Can you play around with the FFT if you make more videos on this scope?

It's interesting that the serpentine differential lines are triple lines - is that going to be minus/ground/plus for a little bit of extra shielding between the two sides of the pair?

Is nice to hear Mike impression about electronics. Hi mike pls. can you explain me what is the diference removing the detent from the rotary encoder, as their count digital steps, or is this just for filling nice to rotate.

Way above my budget :-)

That space must be for a later battery module, why else would they leave that space there. Single 12V power supply rail passing through there also looks that way.

These power supply modules are also low noise because of optimization and cancelation of current loops.

My goal is to identify the functions of the devices in a given circuit diagram? Or spoken more general. How can I lean this general skill? When do I see a random circuit diagram in all kinds of electronic fields that I can recognize the devices and their functions? What is the best strategy to acquire this skill? Do you know good information recourses specially designated to acquire this skill? I do not want to handcraft things on my own and I do not want to study at a university to acquire a bachelor's degree in electrotechnology. I just want to be able to read more or less the circuit diagram. Thank you in advance

Love that we can really trust you when you're saying that you won't take a bribe, just look at the thumbs up vs down! Keep up the awesome work :)

@23:07 are they using the four vias as a K-type thermal couple? next to "Thermal" on the silk.

Interesting to see serial protocol decoding. Better than Keysight?

Be interested to know if you can decode serial etc off digital channels. It's a bit of a bummer that on MSOX2000 series you can't.

A fine machine, there is 'scope' for some enterprising person to produce aftermarket rear cases with battery and/or probe compartment. J.

I've been to one of the offices of the company that makes those power converters, in New Jersey. Sadly I forget most of the details, but they had lots of examples of where they were used. Enperion, I think? Now it's all Intel.

Nice work 👍. price?

"Even the worst of the people that whine about what brand of the capacitors are" -take that Dave! Lol

Listen to the audio at 9:00 when Mike touches the connectors

What's so hard about putting a touchscreen in low end scopes? They only cost a few bucks and the software is easy to write.

those probes look exactly like the ones supplied with picoscopes!

I guess some of the standard stuff in a review. Since it does have digital inputs of course what things it can decode. And the usual undershoot, overshoot.

Tektronix RSA607a have an off the shelf PS.

Those shield cans looked weirdly scuffed up... had you taken it apart already? or could it perhaps just be because it's preproduction and maybe got manhandled a bit?

good gift....!!

I use the web interface to look at the scope on a BIG screen

finally...

7W standby, that can't be right.

Loop at 16:40 could be useful to tie cables to.

Ha ha, I think I could live with the shiny screen and thin plastic feel. Doesn't sound like there's much chance of it coming to Australia. Certainly looks like a candidate for a bit of hacking, adding a battery for example.

29:30 shots fired at dave :P

ikeep trying to win a scope from keysight. maybe i should just become a youtuber instead.

9:59 quick rundown

i'm going to venture and say you've not smoked a joint of the merry-juanna.

It looks like Hameg in a new version R&S. Unfortunately also annoyingly slow like Hameg.

I heard you can get an anti-reflective clear sticker....I'll post a source.

@13:24 dat honeycombs

I don't really care for the control panel. Looks kinda blah with all the buttons being the same rectangular shape and the text labels are too small. I find I can operate faster when I don't need to read the labels and my fingers just know what to push. Kinda like the and space bar on a keyboard.

29:20 Placing a capacitor right next to a heatsink is never a good idea

front panel leds brightness and gigabit ethernet are finally here! said differently, i hate shitty interfaces and lack of linux support by windows applications, browser solves that

This thing has an extremely slow cpu/gpu for a $2000 piece of kit. The touchscreen response makes it almost unusable.

I would gladly spend some $3000 for this piece of kit if only the GUI was at least twice as responsive as it is. On the other side I would not buy this scope even for $1000 - just because I know this slug would render me mad the first hour of using it.

That sluggish response to touch.... it's very annoying and they really should make it snappier if they put a touchscreen on it. Inexcusable IMHO... :/

Touch screens are crap on every bit of technoology they are on...they aren't responsive enough and you're forever cleaning it just to be able to see it clearly, especially for older eyes.

can i have ya old one lmfao 😂 i like ya door bell lol

I wish I were given free stuff for my channel! That would be awesome

12:30 because UK uses these silly huge mains plugs...

No hacking hint? FAIL :D

$4.8k Ug.....

Very interesting subject really. but with your UK accent and whisper like voice. it is hard to catch the words with no subtitles. quite important product for me though but I ditch a lot

Scope porn!!!

Sorry, but this web interface is crappy. Why manufacturers think that putting knobs and mimicing exactly scope inputs in the browser is a good idea!? Things like knows should be text inputs with up and down buttons instead. Also it should support showing each channel separately in own plot, and not use vertical position offset to separate them out (which is awkward, makes reading voltages hard, and compromises dynamic range of the inputs).

Stop waving your hand in front of the camera

Do companies like this regularly just dump $2k equipment on youtube channels in the hope they won't shit all over it??

LOL, it is "schwarz", not "schwartz" :)

Omg!! What's an Apps button doing on a scope?? Please don't tell me this thing has an app store. Hmmm.. Ransomware for scopes!!!! it's all downhill from now.

Excellent video!