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Comment by m-ee | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I'd describe Keysight as a success story of cutting edge R&D, I can't speak for the current Agilent as I'm not a chemist. They and other namesake test equipment brands seem to only focus on the ultra high end and the lower to even midrange models are frequently white labeled products from overseas competitors with a more polished UI. And they're not even always pushing their top end stuff further, their top end multimeter is virtually unchanged since 1990.

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Oh, Keysight gear doesn't hold a candle to vintage Hewlett-Packard. However, I just wanted to argue that Keysight is closer to Bill & Dave's garage than the current HP incarnation. They have some OK gear, but too much of it seems overpriced; they are definitely letting the cheaper Chinese manufacturers catch up to them and seem to only want to rely on institutional contracts.

I personally don't know anyone in the hobbyist electronics space that owns any Keysight gear, my only exposure has been in university labs. Bit of a shame, really.

Yeah it's kind of crazy what HP was able to accomplish, the reason keysight hasn't updated a lot is because they didn't really have to. The DAQs are incremental improvements from what I've seen, the aforementioned 3458A still competes with new instruments, and I honestly enjoyed the 54601A scopes I used in school more than the new Tek ones I have at work.

They are not as affordable as chinese counterparts (Rigol or Siglent) but their 1000x line of scopes is a step in a good direction. I own one although I paid more for less features as compared to Rigol, difference in quality and polish of the UI is staggering.

The 3458A is still one of the highest accuracy, most stable and linear multimeters around, even though new 8.5 digit DMMs have been introduced since then. Anything significantly better is going to look more like a physics experiment than a neatly packaged bench instrument.

I'd appreciate something other than a GPIB connection in 2020, but you're right it's really a marvel of a design. Since getting it in the lab I've started reading more about how it works and there's a lot to learn. The widely lauded ADC in particular is really impressive.

https://doc.xdevs.com/doc/HP_Agilent_Keysight/HP%203458A%20C...

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