A recent thread suggested purchasing a PicoScope over the entry Hantek Scope. So I looked it up the specs:

Spec​	Hantek DSO2D15​	PicoScope 2205A​	Difference​
Bandwidth	150MHz​	25MHz​	6x​
Sample Rate (per channel)	500Msps​	100Msps​	5x​
Sample Depth (per channel)	4M​	16k​	250x!​
Arbitrary Waveform	25MHz, 12 bits​	100kHz, 12 bits​	250x!​
Price	$255.99​	$245.00​	None​

What I don't really understand here is, why do people like picoscope? I've had more than one person suggest them to me, but I take one look at the banner specs and realize that these things suck... even compared to the cheapest dedicated oscilloscopes on the market - and you have to provide a computer to use it. The computer you use is also not isolated to the circuit you're testing. Not a problem for a lot of applications, I suppose, but if you're working on anything greater than logic voltage levels, you may want some isolation - at even more additional cost.

I will say that I do own a USB logic analyzer, and I love it, so I'm not against USB products, but I just don't see why anyone would buy one of the PicoScopes.

What am I missing?

 

It is customary to compare scopes in the same BW class and not by price and when you do and carefully examine the specs and feature set there are vast differences. Put simply, in terms of BW you get what you pay for and comparing apples with oranges is being shortsighted.
https://www.picotech.com/oscilloscope/2000/picoscope-2000-specifications
http://www.hantek.com/products/detail/17182

One must also be careful of datasheet interpretation where memory depth can be described in different ways where the respectable 8Mpts for the Hantek seems quite satisfactory in this class of DSO yet the Pico lists 100 MS (Mpts) for all models.

Pico has a large professional following where Hantek not so much.