Review/Teardown of a FNIRSI 1014D DSO - 100 MHz or 30 MHz Bandwidth?

By popular request, I did a review and teardown of a FNIRSI 1014D digital storage oscilloscope. You can also find the exact same scope under the Yeapook brand (ADS1014D). Although it is advertised as a 100MHz bandwidth scope, in reality the bandwidth is just at around 30MHz. This along with other issues (e.g. low memory depth, low input sensitivity, display artifacts, etc.) makes it hard to justify getting this scope even with the rock bottom price.

00:00 Introduction
02:45 Functional testing
06:10 Bandwidth measurements
11:31 Rise time testing
12:17 AM/FM modulation, Lissajous figure
13:11 Builtin function generator
14:49 Teardown
16:25 Conclusions

[KerryWongBlog]

Please turn off "Stable Volume" in the video playback setting (the first menu item after clicking the gear icon) as for some reason, this new YouTube playback feature made the video much noisier than usual.

[LearnElectronicsRepair]

Hi Kerry, you asked for other opinions. I just made a review of the FNIRSI 1014D and I came to a different opinion to yours. I hope I explained clearly and logically in my review why I disagree with you and invite you to comment here or on my review regards the usefulness of the 1014D.

[instrumentfixeryearsexp]

Just bought this scope, my needs are simple and this scope warts and all fits my needs

[jeffsaxton]

It met my expectations, which weren't high. Money's worth, i think. I'm just using it for hobby purposes. I used to employ Tektronix CRT scopes in my work. This one meets the specs of one of those that cost thousands.

[stefanjetchick]

If you keep doing honest product reviews like this, you'll never get lots of free stuff from unscrupulous manufacturers! ;-)

[electronichome]

Your conclusion is quite harsh, IMO. This "scope" is very good for breadboard applications to learn Arduino, or STM32 or another popular boards and programming. It is not a professional scope, there is no doubt about that. But a moderately good scope costs at least 3000$ and a professional one starts from 10k$. And this one costs only 120$, or at least this is the price I paid a year ago. This is unbeatable price compared to low-class competitors as Hantek, Owon or Siglent for example. I really enjoy using this "oscilloscope" for my hobby learnings with all these ESP32, Raspberry Pi or Arduino boards and it works for me. Just to mention that I have two high-class oscillsocopes Tektronix and HP, one analog Kikusui and one quite expensice Rigole. And I am using most of the time for not so demanding measurements FNIRSI 1014D. And really enjoy to compare identical measurements between all those machines and yes, FNIRSI is really the cheapest ever and not perfect one, but really works well most of the time for frequencies below 30-40 MHz. I am happy to have FNIRSI 1014D, because is very portable and with a great display and quite good mechanics too. It is good to have a backup with good oscilloscope for realistic measurements, but if you need to study a I2C protocol, you don't need LeCroy or Yokogawa, or Tektronix - this scope will do the job as well.

[jrose]

Thank you very much for this honest review and tear down. It is invaluable for someone like me just starting off in my study of electronics and putting together my first work bench. I can ill afford to make bad purchases (which I very nearly did😱). I’ll be sure to check out your other videos and I have subscribed to your channel. Please keep up the great work👍

[grahamhall]

Excellent reviews. Very comprehensive and easy to understand. Love the teardown's. Can see what you get for your money, great, thank you.

[paulfalke]

I have an Owon VDS1022I USB oscilloscope and I think about an oscilloscope with display. Thanks for your teardown. Normally on Youtube, there are a lot of people saying YES or saying NO to any topic. But you give a WHY. This is the engineer way. Thanks!

[TechBench]

The waveform behaviour looks suspiciously as if the acquisition system has been set to some sort of averaging. Perhaps just check the averaging configuration to make sure. If the 'scope has a dot-mode, you should be able to count the number of dots plotted at a specific frequency to determine actual sample rate. Trigger stability is definitely not great. Thanks for taking the time to do this quick review!

[rbruce]

This is just my opinion so take it as that, I thought the review was rather harsh, I know Mr. Wong was just giving his honest opinion, but I think he was a little too harsh, "I would not touch this with a 10 foot pole" that stung, as I purchased this item. I purchased it because I have used older Tektronics Oscilloscopes when going through school, but that was years ago. I purchased this item to re-acclimate myself with oscilloscopes, I did not want to spend allot of money for an item that I could damage while learning, I did not care if it was not too accurate or the specs were somewhat bloated, I purchased this item for 1. it solved ground isolation by being able to be powered by a power-bank, 2. it was under $200 and had most of the basic feature I need to learn 3. additional feature that I could advance too if wanted. I think that Mr. Wong was somewhat blind to the audience, I use YouTube to find and learn things I do not know, I am glad that he was frank, but he could have been without the comment "I would not touch this with a 10 foot pole" that comment is the only thing I found offending to the review. I agree it is a cheap oscilloscope, it has some issues, some that have been corrected by a firmware update. In a summary all I am asking is that you be aware of your audience.

[bacamor]

Well these scopes are well enough for Audio Equipment repairs (expecially the VERY lucrative Vintage segment), so the limitation to 30 Mhz have not weight. With a tiny price a professional can repair with great accuracy Amplifiers, Cassette Decks, CDs, Mixers and all is in the frequence range of 20-20.000 Hz. All this spending a fraction of other useless equipments now on the market. It is a sad realty but the bulk of the job done by laboratories is fine with a 20Mhz Analog Scope of 40 years ago. It is a fact that the advent of brands like FNIRSI, Hantek, Hanmatek, low budget Owon have caused a big hit on Siglent / Rigol balance sheet. Amazon have the warehouses full of Rigols and Siglents that nobody purchase. Recent cheap scopes are all sold out instead.
Even the integrated function generator IS NOT a fantasy, a decent low frequence sinusoidal wave generator is all is needed in Vintage repair and the signal emitted by FNIRSI is well enough for all Hifi Vintage repairs .
Kerry deal with this. I can see some strugless in the future of some well known Pro Chinese brands

[jwrtiger]

I think most of the first part of your video which is measuring bandwidth using a sinewave is in error. Directly connecting a waveform generator outputting a sine wave to the input of the oscope or using a 1x scope probe is not the way to measure the full bandwidth of the oscope. The input to most scopes is effectively a low pass filter composed of an input resistance shunted by an input capacitance (1 Mohm || 16 pF). Again for a sinewave and using a 10x scope probe which contains a capacitor will help cancel out the inherent input oscope capacitance. This will greatly increase the 3dB point in determining the full bandwidth. This is why many oscope manufactures like Rigol state in their header to the specifications that they are made with a 10x probe properly compensated. Please note I am not commenting on rise time measurement. Hope this helps and I enjoy your channel very much and appreciate all the hard work.

[proteomicrotronicsempresa]

Finally somebody do a teardown to this toy oscilloscope, I tested this oscilloscope use a TDR DIY to measure the rise time and with a formula calculate the bandwidth.
The result is sad

[ircustomsignalsuk-rgpe]

I brought one & U am very pleased indeed. Especially as was bought under the other name for well under £200.

[dmmgualb]

I'm an unfortunate owner of one of these osciloscopes (the price got me, and I was looking only for a backup/extra instrument). The main problem really is the gain, it won't see small signals, minimum scale is 50mV/div with 1x probes! Other problem is impedance matching: I was seeing a 5Vpp 1KHz square signal using the 1x probe. When I switched to 10x, it turned to 5.3Vpp (using cursors or automatic measurement gives the same class of error). The actual signal was 5Vpp, measured simultaneously with two other reliable (with valid calibration certificate) osciloscopes. So, I think there is some kind of impedance mismatching. I've tried with two distinct 100x probes with even worse results!:An actual 260Vpp signal showed as 220Vpp in the FNIRSI!. So, it seems to only work ok using probes in 1x mode! So, my advice is the same: don't waste your money!

[andreivolkov]

This scope claims to have a feature of capturing and storing a waveform from oscilloscope input and using this stored waveform as output of signal generator. It would be interesting to see this in action.

Excerpt from their advertising:

"The output device intercepts part or the whole part of the complex signals measured by the oscilloscope as the output signal of the signal generator, which can store up to 1000 customized cut-off signals;
The built-in high-voltage protection module can tolerate up to 400V continuous voltage, without worrying about the oscilloscope burning accident caused by the probe not moving to 10x gear.
Built-in 1GB storage space, can store up to 1000 screen capture pictures + 1000 groups of waveform data, the storage process is simple and fast, save the current waveform with only one click, no cumbersome prompts and choices to save the current data, very convenient."

It seems this scope has some interesting features that differentiate it from other scopes, which may be useful in some scenarios. Not many instruments can replay captured waveform from signal generator.

[stam]

Thank you so much for this video! I am in the market for a scope was considering this model but now I will go ahead and spend a little bit more to hopefully get a better one.

[materialdialectics]

Haha, glad the one I got was a cheap open box deal. I appreciate the honest review though, that said I still think it'll work for my purposes since the utility I'm after is primarily a conceptualization aid, so as long as the relative values are decentish I'm not as concerned with the outright values being accurate.

[freddiebear]

Almost bought this scope, but thanks to your review I bought the Hantek DSO5102P, much better quality!