[teraflop]

You might be thinking of the Rigol DS1054Z digital oscilloscope. It's pretty popular with hobbyists because it's an inexpensive entry-level scope that can easily be "unlocked" to act like a much more expensive model, including better-than-advertised bandwidth.

[posterboy]

I heard the difference might be because testing determines lesser quality builds which then are limited in software to meet the respective specs within a broad error margin. The unlocked ones might work and display but you loose all guarantees on precision. This process is called binning, and is done with many electronic parts, most famously cpus that are binned according to energy efficiency, clock frequency, or cache size.

Of course that doesn't excempt them from attempting price differentiation, e.g. under the veil of this process.

[brokenmachine]

Quite a few people have tested the bandwidth of their hacked DS1054Z oscilloscopes and found they exceed the specs of even the better model.

Not saying this isn't happening, but it seems not to be.

[dekhn]

and a full protocol decoder! For $350!