I dunno why i want new when i get a digital scope.
New will usually get you the latest state-of-the-art, which is important with digital oscilloscopes and most other electronics instrumentation available today. But no matter when you buy, realize that it will be obsolete by the time you receive it, replaced by a newer model that is less expensive with better or more features. And made in China.
My main reason for buying a digital o'scope last year, after more than fifty years of being satisfied using a Tektronix analog o'scope, was waveform capture and subsequent persistent display from on-board digital memory. Plus, you can do a "print screen" to include snapshots of captured waveforms in printed communications, such as here on EP. There really is no analog equivalent for this, although analog storage oscilloscopes exist, and have existed, for many years. In fact, I have used
analog storage oscilloscopes in the previous century and found them wanting. But when digital storage oscilloscopes finally arrived on the scene they were obscenely expensive. There were two reasons for this: (1) really fast analog-to-digital converters (flash converters) were/are expensive and (2) really fast solid-state memory (RAM) was expensive. Neither reason is valid today to justify selling a digital oscilloscope for tens of thousands of dollars. Only if you have deep pockets do you pay that much to get a "name brand" with extra features or extended bandwidth.
Now is an excellent time to explore the possibilities of a digital storage oscilloscope (DSO), with
inexpensive DIY kits readily available from China for about twenty-five bux. A friend here on EP gifted me one of these last year (some assembly required!), and that provided impetus shortly afterward to purchase a "new and improved" factory-built
Hantek DSO5202P from Circuits Specialists, on sale for less than $300 with free shipping. This isn't a "top-of-the-line" digital o'scope, but it provides most of what I need in an oscilloscope, for about the same price that I purchased
a used Tektronix 465B fifty years ago at the Dayton Hamvention™. Since then, I acquired two more 465 o'scopes, so I really like them. But I also like my Hantek DSO, and the freebie kit 'scope is handy for its totally isolated-from-ground, battery-only, operation... although you can power it from a wall-wart to avoid having to replace or recharge the battery.
So, yeah, welcome to the hobby... try not to buy everything all at once, even if you can afford to do so. Better prices and better performance is always just a few months away because electronics manufacturing has essentially become a production printing operation. Instead of ink and paper, we use chips, SMD and printed circuit boards, all automagically assembled at low cost. New ideas percolate and rise to the top of the sales heap constantly. You will go nuts trying to keep up! So don't try. (Has anyone ordered their new iPhone 8 yet?)
