Hantek 6022BE vs Rigol DHO914S

Hantek 6022BE

The Hantek 6022BE is the bare minimum USB oscilloscope — and I mean that literally, not as a compliment. At ~$65, you get 2 channels and 20MHz of bandwidth piped through your laptop screen, which is enough to verify that a PWM signal exists or check audio frequencies. The 20MHz limit is genuinely painful: you can't reliably see rise times on 3.3V Arduino signals, and anything SPI-related at normal speeds is already at the edge of what this scope can resolve. Skip the official software and use OpenHantek instead — it's actively maintained and much better. If you can stretch to the Analog Discovery 3, the difference is night and day. If you're truly at a $65 ceiling and just need to verify signals exist, this will do — but you'll outgrow it fast.

Rigol DHO914S

The Rigol DHO914S is Rigol's Swiss Army knife oscilloscope — 4 analog channels, a 25MHz function generator, optional 16-channel logic analyzer, and Bode plot analysis in the compact DHO form factor. The mixed-signal capability is the real differentiator: if you're debugging embedded systems where you need to correlate analog and digital signals simultaneously, the logic analyzer option makes this genuinely useful in ways a pure analog scope isn't. The built-in AWG saves you $100-200 on a standalone function generator. The catch is the DHO924S at $449 — it also has a function generator and offers 250MHz bandwidth for $100 less. The DHO914S only pulls ahead if you need the logic analyzer capability or the Bode plot feature for control loop design. For pure oscilloscope work, the DHO924S remains the better value.