hand held or bench oscilloscope?

[Doddy]

My main concern with PC based analysers and scopes is simply the coupling between device and the PC - you have more on the bench. They all likely use much the same devices - ADCs and FPGAs. If I was being snobby I'd suggest you get what you pay for, but so much depends on your use-case - if you're just looking at relative timing on a bunch of stepper drivers then you can get away with an awful lot less than if you're trying to measure phase-shift on a video filter, or a heart-beat on a 400Mhz microcontroller. I'd suggest the bench scopes will likely integrate more capability than handhelds and the mixed-signal LA/DSOs - but again, down to what you need. It's worth looking at the analogue front end (particularly the input levels - many handhelds/PC scopes are good for 0-10V sort of ranges.

A good PC scope is likely better than a bad bench scope, and vice-versa. Perhaps link a couple of examples and we'll tear them apart, or otherwise - I can't advise any particular models - my experience is just with the Rigol for home and damned-sight more expensive ones for work.

[routercnc]

A multimeter is a must have for building CNC machines and their control systems, but a scope needs more justification. It’s one of those tools that you don’t need until it’s just what you need ! I looked into handheld and bench mounted a while ago and decided I just wanted to replicate the CRO experience from many years ago, so went benchtop.
I went for the Hantek DSO 5000 series (about £200 at the time) as it looked like just the thing I was after. Luckily for me Banggood also sold that model and they sent one over for review (Ep26 on the YouTube CNC build - just fast forward past me yattering on about the controller to get to the review).

I’ve used it quite a few times and it is very nice to use for general waveform analysis with auto ranging and triggering getting straight to a clean signal. It has done everything I needed to do and has a nice large clear screen. I’m not sure if Hantek make a model with function generators built in but that is worth thinking about although you can buy them separately.

It’s almost twice the price of the handheld but there are cheaper bench mounted DSOs if you go for a lower MHz so as others have said it’s about the use case.

Hope this helps a bit.