Review

I really like this meter. At this price point, it very well serves for what one can expect. Convenient layout, and very, very easy to read screen. For basic functionalities, user interface is great. For more complex operations the user interface works but is not always intuitive (for instance setting the limit values) and often requires lots of keystrokes.

As it has no ventilator, it is dead quiet, and I like that a lot. My Siglent SDS-1032X signal generator, which shares a similar physical design, is very loud.

Early reviews noted a number of issues of this model (and its 3055 and 3065 family members), like low update speed. This is all now all solved by firmware updates.

I was particularly intrigued by the trend mode and the histogram mode. Interesting indeed, but in the trend mode, I kept getting strange spikes every time the meter crossed approx. 2.8 Volt in a positive transition. Surely, these spikes were not in the incoming data (as checked by an oscilloscope). When I replaced the firmware version on the device I received (5.01.01.05 dated 2019/4/23) by the most recent version (5.01.01.05R3 dated 2019/6/17), then these problems disappeared, even though nothing about this weas noted in the firmware revision information.

If there is something not to like, it’s the network interface. Yes, there is an Ethernet port (and an USB port), but using it requires both Siglent software and third-party software (VISA by National Instruments). The latter supports Windows and Mac, the former only Windows. SO Windows is the only option. Then, after installing on Windows, the installation had to overwrite a VISA-related DLL from an earlier measurement device I already use. Eventually got it to work, but installation its cumbersome in several ways and I lost the configuration for other instruments. Many other modern measurement instrument offer remote control via a build-in web page server; this is so much easier! I wish Siglent would update the firmware to do so as well.

Overall, I can certainly recommend this meter at this price point.