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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 July 2025, in the Oscilloscopes category, the mindshare of Keysight Oscilloscopes is 11.0%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rohde & Schwarz Oscilloscopes is 7.3%, up from 7.1% 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

"I use the serial decoder for the serial interfaces, which helps me debug my product quickly."
"The user interface is nice. It describes the output well, so it's easy to use."
"Its versatility and accuracy are the most valuable features."
"Because they're such a big industry standard name, their products are standardized across many customers, which is why people own these products."
"It does everything that I need it to with the PLTS software and the network analyzer software."
"It's a one-stop solution. It does everything we need. The combined functionality is the biggest benefit."
"The most valuable features are its quality and reliability... The good thing about the GUI interface which is, of course, software-based, is that you can record and save your test setup."
"The product's functionality makes things easier for my partner, who is doing the PCIe design. He is able measure the product's usage and bit error rate."
"I have been able to do quality measurements that I have been unable to achieve with the equipment from some other vendors."
"The most valuable features are the accuracy and repeatability."
"The characterization of RF channels was helpful... The user interface was very simple to operate and there were a lot of tutorials."
"It has a very low noise floor."
"Most of the features offered are free, like serial data analyzers or jitter measurements."
"The product is quite reliable and straightforward to use. Typically, there are no households that we have to set up."
"The most valuable features are its wide bandwidth and 8 ports."
"The user interface is pretty good. Right now, it is more than what we expected. It's easy and fast to use."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"They can improve, but I don't know how."
"The user interface can be buggy at times. But I'm an engineer, I figure out how to get around them pretty easily so that's not that much of a concern."
"I would like more customized functions, so we can do the programming and definitions ourselves. There is an automation flow to capture this signal, and we would like to do this ourselves."
"In terms of additional capabilities, I would like to see more touchscreen and a larger screen. That would help."
"I would like to see the possibility of interacting with the software, new features for software post-processing. For example, once you're done measuring, it would be nice to be able to generate some data starting from the measurement data."
"While the user interface is good with respect to instrumentation, but with respect to documentation, I do not like it. Its documentation is slightly bad. It was not organized properly. The way it's organized is very difficult to understand, so it takes lot of time to search for one thing in particular."
"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."
"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."
"The depth the the user GUI could be improved. It is a bit deep for new users. During the first two weeks we spent a lot of time finding the tabs."
"Sometimes, it's difficult to find menus on the user interface."
"They could use an RDA interface."
"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."
"There was a learning curve. Their use interface and the way that their products work are not intuitive to somebody who switches from other vendors."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is affordable for us, but for smaller companies, probably not."
"It's expensive, but the quality matters."
"We are looking at $600,000 and it's obviously expensive, but compared to others, everybody is in the same ballpark."
"If we rented the product, it would be more affordable than buying new."
"The cost is always a struggle. We always wish that we could do more for less."
"The pricing is always high."
"It's very expensive."
"Keysight is on the high side. If they could make the price lower without sacrificing the quality that would be great."
"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."
"The pricing is way too expensive."
"The pricing is too high."
"The pricing is very competitive."
"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."
"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."
"Buying Rohde & Schwarz gear is like buying a Mercedes. It raises eyebrows when you're asking for that level of performance."
"The pricing is very expensive."
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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
8%
 

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.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.