Recommend to a Friend

Excellent performance as well as price!

5.0

I needed a modern, precise / digital control bench PS for development work, largely for noise-sensitive measurement and data acquisition systems for physics research. I evaluated quite a few units from the well known manufacturers, and found them unfortunately lacking, especially in regards to ripple/noise and especially low frequency noise. Spurred by a colleague I evaluated Rigol which I had, I must apologize to say, previously regarded as a cheapo brand not to be used for serious work. Well I was sure wrong about that. The DP831A and the very similar DP832A are very low noise -- best that I have found in any digital and remote controllable lab supply. Also the accuracy is good and within specifications, for instance on this unit when I set ch2 to 0.15V I get 0.1480V and when set to 15V I get 15.0009V according to a recently calibrated Keithley 2010. Load regulation is similarly excellent.
I do have a few negatives about it:
- The round numeric keypad thing is dorky! Just dorky! But ok I can live with that.
- The yellow channel label on front panel is too hard to read. Calling this channel green would have been better. Anyway, I have a sharpie so I will make my own / - signs.
- Wouldn't iot have been better to make the positive channel red (or purple) and the negative one blue? They have positive blue and negative purple, geez!
- The binding posis work great for banana plugs (I heard there was some trouble in past, buit not on this recent unit). But do not stick a wire in the wire hole, it sucks, will bend it and eat it. Why is that hole so far off the back contact surface, unlike any other binding post with a wire hole that I ever saw. If you have wires to connect and you want to re-use them another time, don't use the wire hole.
- The firmware that it ships with has a bug regarding DHCP. I had to figure this out for myself (symptoms: it tries eventually once a second or so to get a new address). I submitted question to Rigol tech support, they replied very promptly and said it was a known issue and quided me to install updated firmware, which resolved the problem. A for Rigol tech support for speedy and correct service. D- (at best) for Rigol production managers for allowing shipping a product with a known issue that is so easily corrected, without so much as an erratum note! Really, that is lame.
Anyway, overall it is a great power supply. Check carefully between DP832A and DP831A which is best for you -- I think most people would be better off with DP831A. Each has two channels that are not isolated from each other. This is not so clearly spelled out for DP832A I think.

Verified Purchase Gerard Visser on Sep 23, 2018 I found this helpful (3)