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Keysight Oscilloscopes vs Rohde & Schwarz Oscilloscopes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Keysight Oscilloscopes
Ranking in Oscilloscopes
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Rohde & Schwarz Oscilloscopes
Ranking in Oscilloscopes
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Oscilloscopes category, the mindshare of Keysight Oscilloscopes is 10.8%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rohde & Schwarz Oscilloscopes is 6.8%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Oscilloscopes
 

Featured Reviews

AC
The technical support ecosystem is what really makes it good.
Because they're such a big industry standard name, their products are standardized across many customers, which is why people own these products. The customer support is very good. If you need an application to do any measurement, you can easily get a hold of people to help you with it. This is a whole ecosystem. The user interface is top-notch in the industry.
AM
The ability to have both the time domain and frequency domain, where the frequency domain is a very broad spectral plot, is extremely valuable
There is certainly a learning curve. Finally, watching YouTube videos on using the instrument got me over the hump, as well as a sit down session with one of the oscilloscope experts. The Rohde & Schwarz user interface is very oriented towards drop and drag functions on the screen. Some of those are just not obvious how to use. You have to have somebody get you over the hump. My understanding is they have a newer user interface, but I haven't gotten around to upgrading the firmware on my scope in some time, so I'm not familiar with it yet. In comparison, I love the LeCroy interface. Recently, I've learned that there are ways to adapt these instruments to become a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA), which is of interest to me. If I can use probes that are not in the 50 ohm domain, which is what you would have with a normal Vector Network Analyzer, then doing power applications for me, this would be a lot safer. Using a traditional communications type Vector Network Analyzer in the 50 ohm domain and having these high DC potentials (adding the DC blocks is adding air to the test method), then having an oscilloscope type front-end which is lot more tolerant of overload, it is a lot safer. The vector network analysis that I need to do is well under a gigahertz, and the other instruments that I have sort of stop at 40 megahertz. Trying to get past 40 megahertz into the mid-hundreds of megahertz and have high impedance probes that will tolerate DC, that is really of interest to me.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Because they're such a big industry standard name, their products are standardized across many customers, which is why people own these products."
"It has the highest bandwidth and resolution on the market."
"It does everything that I need it to with the PLTS software and the network analyzer software."
"The user interface has never been better. They improved it a few years ago with a more modern oscilloscope interface and it's easier to use, even for more junior people in our lab."
"Before silicon came back, our customers' performance was affected. Using these tools, we are able to deliver performance to our customers."
"It's accurate, fast, has high bandwidth, and the PLTS is pretty convenient."
"The user interface is very user-friendly. You can use a lot of functions in their scope and will provide them for you. You can update the scope's software by asking Keysight to update the software when you want."
"The Keysight Ecal feature has made it very easy for me to do calibrations."
"The most valuable features are the accuracy and repeatability."
"I have been able to do quality measurements that I have been unable to achieve with the equipment from some other vendors."
"It has a very low noise floor."
"The instrument has a wide bandwidth. You can sweep across a wide range of frequencies."
"Most of the features offered are free, like serial data analyzers or jitter measurements."
"The characterization of RF channels was helpful... The user interface was very simple to operate and there were a lot of tutorials."
"It is easy to connect with, accurate, reliable, and hardly fails."
"The product is quite reliable and straightforward to use. Typically, there are no households that we have to set up."
 

Cons

"Some of the models have only two ports. It takes much longer to use a two-port. If they had a four-port, it would be much better."
"If the simulation runs for a long time, it will suddenly crash. If they can debug that, the product would be better."
"There is a learning curve depends on the client that I am working with. E.g., if I'm working with a client, and they have a test and measurement equipment company, when I go to another company, the new company may not be using the same model."
"Their GUI is not the best. They need to improve on that. I think their software team needs to put in a little bit more work on how they are presenting the application on the scope."
"There is room for improvement with some of the features of the scope. I would like them to make it a bit more simplistic... For example, if I want to look at what the total jitter is, they should make it simpler to find that, with different tabs."
"The technical support is okay, but sometimes they are on a different page than us. If it is something wrong with the scope, they are okay. However, if something technical goes wrong, like the calibration, it is hard to get the information that we need because it is hard to share everything and explain all the measurements in real-time."
"I would like them to build in more high-speed functions, such as FEC or PCIe, built into the array. PERT to be built-in for more specific product call. These would make our lives much easier."
"I would like be able to measure multi-lane simultaneously. Right now, the high-performance jitter solution measures one signal. I would like to capture many at the same time."
"The size of the unit is too big, too heavy. It has to be made more portable and smaller."
"The Rohde & Schwarz user interface is very oriented towards drop and drag functions on the screen. Some of those are just not obvious how to use. You have to have somebody get you over the hump."
"In the next release, I would like to see report generation. It would make it a lot easier to refer back to and, when doing final testing, seeing what went on during the pre-test would help."
"We would like to have autotracking and auto error tracking for regression testing. We would like to know what error happened, when it happened, and during what scenario (such as setup), because right now we have to manually look at when it happened."
"The user interface could be improved, e.g., the documentation on the menus. I have to open a separate document to figure out the functionality sometimes."
"They could use an RDA interface."
"I'm against the Windows-based tools. Now everybody is running scopes, VNAs, and all their tools based on Windows. I don't want to see that in the future."
"It would be good if they would try to automate most things because it has more pressing buttons and repetitive work. If there were automation scripts that they could provide, that would improve things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing can be improved a bit. They try to make the pricing competitive but I think there are times that the competitors have good pricing."
"The pricing is very expensive."
"Our solution is upgradable. However, upgrading depends on how much money the company is willing to spend, because each upgrade will take a million dollars."
"Pricing always is very expensive. There's no free lunch."
"The pricing is very expensive, but with leading technology, nothing is cheap."
"The pricing is always high."
"The pricing is on the high side."
"It's very expensive because this type of equipment is not so common. For a company buying it, this is a big investment."
"The pricing is very competitive."
"One of the things I liked less, not only me but also my company, was that Rohde & Schwarz are very expensive... There are solutions that are almost the same that sell at better prices."
"When we chose this, the price was really reasonable, and it is a high-end product. It had a high price, but we understood that because it has 8 port, the same noise floor (as the competition) with double the measurement capabilities and a cheaper price."
"If we are looking to purchase a product, we ask for a loaner for a month or so to test it out. Then, we will make a decision."
"The pricing is very expensive."
"The pricing is too high."
"The pricing is expensive, but very fair when you look at the technology that you are getting. These are higher-end pieces which have a ton of engineering in them that is not evident on the package. However, you could imagine the amount of time that the vendor has spent on the firmware, optimizing the internal layout, developing custom ICs, etc. They're releasing a mass produced product, but these things are built to last."
"Buying Rohde & Schwarz gear is like buying a Mercedes. It raises eyebrows when you're asking for that level of performance."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
University
9%
Legal Firm
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Government
10%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Also Known As

InfiniiVision Series, Infiniium Series
RT Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nokia Bell Labs
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Keysight Oscilloscopes vs. Rohde & Schwarz Oscilloscopes and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.