Interesting as I'm considering buying a scope. Does this still give the most bang for your buck in 2023? Many online commenters mention the Siglent SDS1104X-E as a more modern alternative.
The key differences: the screen is a bit better on the Siglent, Rigol makes you go through a stupid unlock routine to get your features, but (and this is the killer) Rigol has LXI (scriptable ethernet control) whereas the Siglent only appears to have a web-based remote control mechanism - substantially inferior IMHO.
The SDS1000X-E datasheet says that it supports SCPI over Ethernet, and there’s a programming manual available from Siglent (weirdly the links seem broken on their website)
It's not going to be a popular opinion due to the 10x difference in price, but I think the Rohde & Schwarz RTB2004 is one of the best hobbyist class scopes you can get (in terms of bang/buck).
So what's going on with the RTB2004 that is providing so much bang for that 10x price difference... and why do you claim that such a machine is "hobbyist class"?
Except that those old cheap ones are almost universally analog scopes. They are pretty much completely useless for digital work. In the current Arduino-filled world, you are probably going to need a DSO.