Keysight Oscilloscopes Reviews

We're using the N5227A 67-gigahertz analyzer for signal integrity applications, the passive components.

The solution is targeting the high-speed application space for us. Since we design components, primarily connectors, it needs to be high-speed to meet all the demands a standard connector company would need to meet, like a Tyco or Amphenol.

We are measuring standard step signals, full signals. We are utilizing the full bandwidth of the product.

It does everything that's fundamental for SI design in general. I'm not really sure how to explain how it improved anything other than that it does exactly what I need it to do. I don't really need to add or subtract anything from what's already available.

It does everything: 

• frequency
• applications
• time domain
• transformation. 

It does everything that I need it to with the PLTS software and the network analyzer software.

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. It allows me to do everything I need to do.

I would like to see better post-processing data utility tools like a de-embedding.

Technical support is pretty responsive, pretty decent.

We didn't have a previous solution.

It's very expensive.

Be aware that there are other solutions out there that are cheaper. And if you're willing to put in the extra work to make up for the disparity between the products, I think it can be done.

There was a learning curve, but only in so far as I needed to be more familiar with signal integrity design in general. They do offer a lot of resources available to budding SI engineers. As soon as you get the basics down, you get the gist of how to use their equipment.

Our solution is field-upgradable. We plan on upgrading it, probably within the next five to ten years.

I would rank the product at seven out of ten. It does everything I need it to do, but it is really expensive and I think there are alternatives out there that I could choose that would be cheaper. But we already have the product.

We use Keysight VNA to make sure of our materials' performance and DKDF measurements.

It's mainly for 5G and high-speed, high-frequency systems. VNA can be used in multiple ways. Right now we are using it to characterize our materials. But in the future, we want to make some devices, like antennas or circuits, using our materials and measure them using VNA. It has a lot of capabilities.

For us, it's mainly RF signals. Typically, we measure about 40 gigahertz or so. We are not currently using the full bandwidth but we expect to in the future.

The measurements that the network and laser do are very important for us because DuPont is a materials company and we need to know the performance of our materials at high frequencies. This is the way to measure that, using the VNA.

It can go up to a very high frequency, up to 120 gigahertz. And the user interface is really good. It's really easy to navigate.

I would like to see it go to higher frequencies at the same price.

Also, we tried to connect multiple computers with a KVM switch but we could not do that using Keysight VNA. Keysight VNA comes with the PC inside it. We have other equipment as well, and we tried to combine it so that we had one monitor to control everything. With Keysight we could not do it. That's something of an inconvenience.

Technical support is very helpful. They have a local technical office up here in Santa Clara. They can come anytime we call them and they'll support us.

We didn't have a previous solution, but we did some investigation with our internal DuPont colleagues and also talked to experts to determine the right solution and we selected this one.

It's expensive, but the quality matters.

I would definitely recommend trying this product. It's a really reliable and high-performance machine.

In terms of a learning curve on the equipment, I had some training on the VNA before we purchased it, so for me training was done within a week or so. It was not really hard. But for colleagues, it took them some time to learn it.

Upgrades are always welcome. Apart from VNA, we need to purchase all the fixtures, other equipment to connect to VNA. They are very expensive tools, and that's part of upgrading what we are doing in the lab.

The solution, performance-wise is a ten out of ten. Price-wise, it's a six out of ten.

I use it with connected devices, like IoT, in the lab to validate, verify, or design.

With this scope, we are measuring: Internet signals, media signals, PCIe, USB signals, and some other low-speed serial interfaces.

The DDR Utilities that I have used on the scope speed up my debugging process. Similarly, I use the serial decoder for the serial interfaces, which helps me debug my product quickly.

The application utilities loaded on the scope help debug different protocols.

I like the Keysight user interface very much. It's based on the PC model. So, that's why we are using the PC all the time. We don't need to remember anything, as everything seems familiar.

Everybody is looking for more automation support, so that if they can incorporate more protocols. It makes it easier. 

People are always going for higher bandwidth and better probing solutions. It needs more flexible probing solutions, especially for the complex ICs. 

Cost is also a factor on one of the DDRs. I was trying to buy an interpolar so that I can hook up all the probes and have them rerun one time. However, that was quite costly. If I had to do a single or double debugging, then I maybe would spend time soldering each bar rather than using that because it was costly.

I do plan to take advantage of the upgrade whenever we are having an upcoming project as it's really good. Then, I don't have to buy new equipment. I just need to upgrade it. 

We use it with about 900,000 CDs.

We sometimes utilize the full bandwidth of the product.

The technical support is very easy to reach. I have contacted them a few times regarding the feature usage. These were for additional compatible solutions that I needed to purchase, and they were always very responsive to my requests.

While I don't have transparency on the pricing, it works within my budget.

We evaluated Keysight, Tektronix, and Anritsu.

We trialed Keysight and learned about the tool. We learned that we would be able to make use of it in the way that we were envisioning, and it supports all of those things that we wanted.

It's a very nice product. Whatever feature that I was looking for, it was within my budget. It was affordable. I can upgrade it later, if necessary. Plus, if something with an initial option was going out of my budget, they offered to give me something like a refurbished model. This made it worthwhile because the other option I explored was way beyond my budget, and I simply could not get approval for that additional amount of money.

Always reach out to the area manager or application engineer to show your interest. They are able to hook you up with the right technical application engineer, who can understand what you are trying to do, then recommend what are the best possible solutions and give you a demo for you to feel comfortable. It is also good for them to show you the features.

While it's more intuitive than other scopes, there is a little longer learning curve. I do consider it quick to learn.

It is targeted towards embedded systems and controller cards, like USB and PCIe.

We are measuring eye diagrams of the eyes of high-speed PAM signaling. It's the primary reference for measuring the quality of our transmitted signal, so we're using it to validate that we made the correct chip and that our circuits are working as expected.

They're 100-gigabit per second PAM-4 signals and they're enabling the data center and high-speed wireless connectivity. We're utilizing the full bandwidth of the product.

For us, the solution is targeting 5G, high-speed serial, and embedded systems. For example, in 5G, we're using the optical, we're measuring T.Q, or some fancy optical output. And for the embedded system, we're measuring the electrical performance, usually over some sort of backplane. 

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.

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 room for improvement is the cost. It's always too expensive. And it's an industry-wide problem to correlate the measurements with real system performance on an oscilloscope.

They have an 800 number you call and they answer it day or night. And then, many of the engineers are in my Rolodex so I'll just call them directly and say, "What's up?"

The cost is always a struggle. We always wish that we could do more for less.

At our particular company, there's a very decent volume agreement between Keysight and my corporation, so that influences a lot. But we also extensively use the Tektronix as well as the LeCroy.

We did do trials/demos of the products on our shortlist before purchasing and what we learned was that demos never go as expected.

My advice would be to get the demos because everyone's application tends to be different. Sometimes it's the fixturing, or sometimes you realize some things in particular that make a difference for your needs. It's hard, just in theory, to know.

There's very much a learning curve. It's hard for me to talk about it in detail because I have used the tool for over 20 years, so as it evolves, I evolve too. Since the very beginning of time I've used many different solutions for measuring, starting off with HP then finally going to Keysight. It's always been a reference measurement method.

The solution is not field upgradable, typically. You need to buy a new one to go faster.

This product is a ten out of ten. The DCA-X is the industry standard. It's hard to get better.

We use it mostly for experimental measurements.

The space we use it in is high-speed and some instances of 5G as well. But we use it mostly for high-speed serial links. We are mostly measuring signal integrity and S-parameters. We're not using full bandwidth yet. We're still at lower speeds, but very soon we may be using the full bandwidth.

We use it to support connected devices as well. I can't go into details, but it's part of the internet of things. In my company we are trying to create a connected world. That is one of our main goals. There are different products located in different places and we want them all to be connected. This can definitely be useful to design and to include them.

We have done some measurements and also correlated with simulation and we were able to obtain a good match, so that's a good indication of the accuracy.

The most valuable features include the

• accuracy 
• embedding 
• calibration system.

Also, the user interface is nice. It describes the output well, so it's easy to use.

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.

Technical support is very good. We received onsite support when there was an issue.

We didn't switch. Even in my previous company we were also using the same type of instrument, the same company. It was a little bit different application, different model, but similar.

It would be good if it were a little bit cheaper, of course.

The product is really satisfying. There are very few companies that they do the same, so there are not too many competitors. Keysight is very well known in the industry, in terms of accuracy and support. There are a few, but not too many, that you can choose from.

We did not do a trial beforehand in this case because we already had the VNA all over and we wanted to expand the bandwidth.

I would certainly recommend that colleagues use the same solution for their application.

I don't remember at the moment which model we're using, but it's the one with the highest bandwidth for the VNA.

There is a little bit of a learning curve but it's not too difficult because there is good support. I had some previous experience and it took me a few days to start and then, to get a little bit more familiar, took a few weeks.

In terms of field-upgradability, there a possibility by changing the software to add new features and we want to take advantage of that. For example, I know that the VNA can be also a spectrum analyzer, so we want to try to take advantage of that without buying another instrument. It will enable us to use it for two purposes.

We use them for experimental measurements.

Since this equipment does a lot of different things, it's hard to say what is most valuable. It's a one-stop solution. It does everything we need. The combined functionality is the biggest benefit.

Regarding the user interface, since we are so familiar with it, it's easy to work with.

The biggest challenge for us is getting to higher frequencies, higher data rates. The higher-data product is always more expensive so if it could be cheaper for high-frequency measurement, that is what we would ideally want.

There is room for improvement in the upgradability of the products. When we buy a platform, we would like that platform to survive two or three generations, because it is very expensive. If they could provide a more modular type of design, so if we want to upgrade one functionality then we could upgrade that module, rather than all the equipment, that would be helpful. That modularity is something we would like to see.

Keysight has been very helpful, their technical support is great.

We did not switch to this product from something else. Some equipment works up to 30 gigahertz. When we started developing the newer product, which has higher frequencies, obviously we needed to buy the newer generation. When we made those changes we evaluated different vendors.

We are looking at $600,000 and it's obviously expensive, but compared to others, everybody is in the same ballpark.

It is between Tektronix, Keysight, and LeCroy. Those are the three we look at.

We did trials and learned about the features, how easy to use the products are, how consistent the data measurements are, and things like that.

My advice would be to evaluate the Keysight product.

In our company we have been using the Keysight equipment for at least 15 years. We use many different versions so I do not remember specific model numbers but we use a lot of the scopes, as well as PPD.

Technology advances in this field so we are always in a learning curve because there is always new technology, new products, new features come out.

I would rate this product at eight out of ten because of the features, ease of use, and the support.

We use this for testing our product and also for doing major maintenance, simulation correlation.

For example, we design a test for what we call our channel test vehicle. We have a simulation result according to our structure, such as a BGA footprint. Then we use the channel test vehicle, and test with Keysight VNA so we can compare the result with our simulation.

For us, the solution is targeting high-speed serial, like I/O ports, things like a 25-gigabit per second signaling array. We use it for a lot of I/O components and connector cable qualification. We utilize the full bandwidth.

It's very convenient because once we set up everything, we just queue our test plan and then are able to do whatever we want: embed with the key size and the PLOTS auto fix removal. And it has a good calibration kit. It's very convenient to use.

The user interface is very good, very graphical. It provides a lot of help in using and operating it.

I wish they would improve the Embed function in the current product because, as the frequencies go up, we see a lot of diversity because of effects in the test feature. So I hope they will provide better technology to solve the test feature diversity which affects our test results. We don't want the test feature effect in our measurements.

Also, every component has a manufacturing tolerance. I hope Keysight software can help with the tolerance loss in manufacturing variance, which can be ten percent or five percent. In the real world, we cannot fire a really perfect test with very smooth impedance. I would like to see Keysight provide a solution to solve the issue of loss of manufacturing variance.

Regarding the solution being field-upgradable, it is, but I think we need something beyond that. We need to expand to 60 or 70 gigahertz or even higher, perhaps up to 100 gigahertz.

They have very good technical support. Their local sales representative usually comes to our office and does demos. If we have any technical issues they will either be onsite or solve our question over the internet.

We went with this solution because with our high speed, and the rates going up, we definitely need more high-speed equipment and that goes with this equipment. This is a very high, cutting-edge area. For our industry, we have a cutting-edge signaling array. We want to have the most advanced equipment and Keysight is a well-known name in the industry.

We did a trial and learned its capabilities, what the frequency goes to, and the calibration procedure to make sure the measurements are good at such high frequency.

In terms of a learning curve for the product, I'm very familiar with this product because I have used it for a long time. I know how to operate it. The only learning for me is every time there is a new software release, like auto fix removal, if there is any new functionality, I need to familiarize myself with that, but that's all. It generally takes just a couple of days to figure it out.

It's very expensive because this type of equipment is not so common. For a company buying it, this is a big investment.

Review case studies from the manufacturers' data sheets and compare their price and their performance. In the high-speed area there are a lot of data that need to be considered, such as your dynamic range for the equipment and the noise level. We need very high accuracy, so it's better to compare before buying from any supplier.

I have been using this product for at least ten years. Already in my third year of my PhD I was using Keysight, although I don't think it was called Keysight at the time. In terms of the model I'm using currently, I don't remember the type and specific model number but I know it's a 50 gigahertz VNA, from 300 kilohertz to 50 gigahertz.

I would rate this product at eight out of ten because the equipment is very expensive, it's very high-end. But it is very accurate equipment. Keysight is a leader in this area.

We are using it for R&D and production testing. We currently have a few models. We have a 26 gig with 32 ports. We also have 40 gig and 67 gig models.

I'm an SI engineer. We use Keysight equipment almost six hours everyday, making a lot of measurements.

Their software and hardware are integrated, so we don't have to spend a lot of time processing the data.

I am not really impressed with the GUI since it has not changed in almost 20 years (since I first began using the product). While the GUI part is okay, I can live with it. I would like more accuracy, particularly for multiport measurements.

Sometimes, it's quite hard to get the technical support to come onsite. If we run into a hardware, measurement, or software issue, we may have to wait a long time for them to come.

We have been with Keysight for many years.

We just upgraded our system from 40 gigahertz to 67 gigahertz. We just recently bought one.

The major factor influencing the decision-makers is the price.

Keysight is one of the very original companies who developed measurement equipment, so we've been stuck with them for long time.

We are doing high-speed copper cable measurement at about 112 gigabit per second requiring bandwidth at about 40 to 50 gigahertz.

The majority of our products are connected devices.

We are currently using it for 56G ANSI, 56G PAM-4, and 112G PAM-4. These are our three main signals. We are utilizing the full bandwidth of the product.

Keysight equipment is very popular.

We are using Keysight Oscilloscopes and software for assimilations. 

Their new features are very useful for our jobs and workflows because they are very accurate.

Its versatility and accuracy are the most valuable features.

The user interface is very simple. Everyone can use it.

They can improve, but I don't know how.

We are utilizing the full bandwidth of the product.

I don't know if its upgradable for our parts. I think we use all of the features that can be used.

We have often needed technical support often. They were always ready to help us. They have been very useful. 

If you need help, there is always someone who will help you.

The pricing is good for what they offer.

Once we knew that we needed this type of software, we decided on Keysight.

I suggest looking over their use case site.

We are using it to connect IoT to our products.

We're measuring high-speed signals, like USB, PCI Plus, HDMI, DDR, memories, power rails, etc.

The application space the solution targets is embedded systems. For example, an embedded PC for industry automation, including wellness in strength machines or bicycles.

With telecommunications. The protocol standard needs to be created, then it uses 4G or some type of 5G for preliminary spec. Afterwards, we can create a pattern, major it, then we can see some of the IDOCs run or have some of the special masks to test it.

While it depends on the field, the learning curve is usually really quick.

The user interface is getting better. A graphical interface would be good, but having been a test engineer previously, it is nice to have some script programming.

The integration between different software and hardware panels could be improved. In the software, it's not as strong as the other solutions.

They should have more training resources accessible.

Usually, we don't ask too much of the technical support. 

There are a lot of secondhand models in the market, so that is how we first accessed it. Then, we bought the newer version after that.

We did do a demo with the company first.

If we rented the product, it would be more affordable than buying new. I would like it to be more affordable.

The application space the solution targets is usually telecommunications, like 4G and 5G.

We are measuring RX and TX signals.