Ranking test gear using google scholar? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: spacehen
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 12:45:37 pm
content: Hi guys,Ultimately we all want to buy professional tools that are used in industry/research right?Not cheap toys that crash/break after a couple of uses.Use of a specific piece of test equipment in an academic setting/research paper is definitely a positive sign I would argue.Itusuallysuggests that the author had/has some form of confidence in the tool to acquire scientific data.So why not go through a list of common test equipment and see how many results we get for each brand/unit?I would like to firstly like to break various test equipment manufacturers into 'tiers' based on 3 general factors: company reputation, perception and build quality.High end:TektronixAgilentR&SThese are the brands that have been with us for a long time now. We know that these companies generally produce high end products with good build quality.Mid tier:RigolSiglentThese brands generally cater for the entry level market. Rigol and Siglent are the two most trusted chinese brands and both produce equipment with a high performance to price ratio and reasonable build quality.Low tier:HantekFnirsiUnit-TThese are the relatively new kids on the block so to speak. Products from these brands are sometimes labeled as' junk' or 'toys' and quality control is not great.So with those few companies let's hop on google scholar!Let's start by just searching brand names + oscilloscope:High end:Tektronix - 193,000 hits ('tektronix oscilloscope')Agilent/Keysight - 90,000 hits 'agilent oscilloscope'R&S - 5 k hits for ('R&S oscilloscope')Mid tier:Rigol - 6k hits ('rigol oscilloscope')Siglent - 1k hits ('siglent oscilliocope')Low tier:Unit-T - 893 results ('uni-t oscilloscope')Hantek - 577 hits ('hantek oscilloscope')Fnirsi - 7 results ('fnirsi oscilloscope')As can be seen by the results Rigol has the same results as R&S. These are of course not precise results but I believe they have some level of meaning. And the results do made some sense. The big boys get much more hits than the smaller players.Let's try something a bit more advanced, a spectrum analyzer.Let's start by just searching brand names + 'spectrum analyzer':High end:Tektronix - 28,000 hits ('tektronix spectrum analyzer')Agilent/Keysight - 191,000 hits 'agilent spectrum analyzer'R&S - 17 k hits for ('R&S spectrum analyzer')Mid tier:Rigol - 2.4k hits ('rigol spectrum analyzer')Siglent - 350 hits ('siglent spectrum analyzer)Low tier:Unit-T - 784 results ('uni-t spectrum analyzer')Hantek - 107 hits ('hantek spectrum analyzer')Fnirsi - Does not produce spectrum analyzersLet's do some searching on some specific models to get a better picture:High end:Tektronix - 142 hits ('RSA306')Agilent/Keysight - 728 hits 'E4408B'R&S - 61 hits for ('FPC1500')Mid tier:Rigol - 247 hits ('DSA815')Siglent - 27 hits ('SSA3021X')Rigol does well here.Low tier:Unit-T - no resultsHantek - 4 hits ('HSA2030')Fnirsi - Does not produce spectrum analyzersNot looking good.Feel free to do your own experimentation, this is nothing scientific, just a quick investigation I did due to curiosity.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 12:52:04 pm
content: You are missing GW Instek and MicSig. As the latter is relatively new, you won't get that many hits.

author: tunk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 01:33:44 pm
content: And Owon. Four tiers may be better:- low: owon, hantek, uni-t- bottom: fnirsi et al.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 01:54:30 pm
content: Quote from: tunk on July 04, 2023, 01:33:44 pmI'm missing Feeltech as well. And TTi.But also high end brands like Yokogawa, Kikusui, TonghuiThere are so many brands out there that offer nice equipment. Sometimes to serve a specific niche.First thing to do when looking for equipment is research which brands sell the kind of equipment you are looking for. Even that can produce quite a long list.

author: coromonadalix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 03:52:25 pm
content: Aneng, mastech many brands and or the "clones"

author: ralphrmartin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 05:39:49 pm
content: Quote from: spacehen on July 04, 2023, 12:45:37 pmAs a retired academic, I can assure you that academics, like everyone else, consider value-for-money. They try to make their grant money go as far as possible. While use of a piece of equipment should normally indicate that it can do the job in an acceptable manner, it does not indicate it is the best tool for the job, just that it was a cost-effective solution. E.g. re-using equipment from a previous project may be better value than buying new specific equipment for the current project. Making sure there is enough money left to publish results (page charges or conference costs) can be more important than getting the best possible results.

author: Floopy
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 05:50:47 pm
content: Quote from: ralphrmartin on July 04, 2023, 05:39:49 pmI second that!

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 06:00:38 pm
content: Quote from: Floopy on July 04, 2023, 05:50:47 pmAlso: Buying from "non-official" providers in academia can be impossible. Quite often we have to buy something we didn't really want just because of bureaucracy.All in all... I'd say this "quest" is a complete waste of time.

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 06:06:39 pm
content: Quote from: spacehen on July 04, 2023, 12:45:37 pmYou're offering no evidence to support your central thesis here. Even if you assume (without bothering to support or discuss the assumption) that someone in an academic setting will know best (or receive guidance from the experienced) how to judge whether a particular instrument is superior for a particular purpose, you would still need to determine whether that instrument's quality was essential to the experiment to know if its selection reflects any particular merit. If I have an experiment that requires me to distinguish between two binary states, one an 8kHz 1V square wave and the other a 3kHz 5V sine wave, the selection of a Tektronix MSO68B over a Fnirsi probably only means the Tek was available in the lab. Or, if it was the Fnirsi, it just means it was dirt cheap and good enough. You'd have to throw away all your data points like this where the selection of instrument isn't significant.I'm not saying your idea is totally without merit, but rather that any meaningful analysis is just not going to be that simple. University laboratories acquire a pretty wild variety of unusual things (and traditions) and not always for reasons that would be obvious to a casual observer. There are always stories. If you use what you have because it is good enough or it is all that you can afford, that says nothing about your opinion as to the quality of the devices let alone your qualifications to have such an opinion.Lastly, such studies may not be helpful to people looking for equipment not used in a specific lab setting. Someone studying batteries might like to have a reliable, accurate Keithley DAQ6510. Even though it seems affordable for what it is, I doubt many of them will find their way on to the typical EEVBlog workbench.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 07:08:05 pm
content: True. Every now and then I spend time in academic research labs and the equipment they use is a wide variety. From low end stuff, really old stuff to high end gear. It just depends on the requirements at hand.

author: Weston
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 07:47:49 pm
content: I have a few published IEEE papers and have rarely listed the equipment used. Many oscilloscope measurements are largely qualitative, so equipment is not that important.For anything where you need precision, like accuracy, you are better off mentioning if the equipment is in calibration than the brand name. I would expect even the mid/low tier brands to meet the published specifications, which is what matters.Its not something that I have really paid close attention to, but it seems that papers from developing countries are more likely to list the equipment model/brand. If they have it, they want to show off having the expensive equipment.At American institutions, new faculty start off with a big budget (start up package for the lab) based on an equipment list they provide the university. A lot of the quoting and even acquisition is handled by the university itself, and due to existing relationships most of what is bought is pretty nice "high end" stuff. After that, the faculty is pretty much on their own and has to buy new equipment from discretionary budget or request it in project grants. There is typically a threshold of ~$5k where purchases above that have to go through a formal purchase process. Below that it's easy to buy cheap equipment on the discretionary account.Due to this the lab I am in has some fancy tektronix / Agilent scopes bought with my advisor's start-up budget and a bunch of cheap Rigol scopes and power supplies for general use that were under the $5k limit where we need to go through the official purchase process. I think it's a pretty common situation.

author: nvmR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 08:48:01 pm
content: I second ralphrmartin and Weston.Academics have their own considerations - which are often quite distant from a hobbyist/professionals consideration. It could be using what was on hand, using what "I used when I was a student" and other irrelevant metrics.Sometimes its swimming in money, or having grant money that is dedicated to equipment purchasing, or a coop with a company.

author: M Harris
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 11:37:16 am
content: I agree with others that the basic premise of this is flawed. When I worked in academia we barely had any money for equipment on the vast majority of projects - so we used what we had. If we really needed a capability we could apply to the administration for a specific grant to buy that specific equipment, but it would be the bare minimum we could get away with.Our Keysight rep was really great, we'd often get 70% off the retail price of equipment, especially if it wasn't the latest and greatest.As I was leaving we had just received a CA$1.5M grant from the government for a new lab and a bunch of new equipment - there was a lot of equipment in there we had often dreamed about having, but is still lower spec/price than what I have in my lab now as a small business owner.There was very little regard taken to having the perfect equipment, the best equipment, etc - that is what we dreamed of having. Our priority was putting the project budget into as many person hours as possible so we could all get our contracts renewed... every dollar we spent was less hours for us.

author: ralphrmartin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2023, 06:38:38 pm
content: To follow up: perhaps we can turn the quest on its head. Draw up a list of Manufacturers by "reputation", then see where academic paper authors come from who mention using their equipement. This might give an idea of how generous research funding is in each country.