Just as landline phones became accompanied by cordless and eventually pocket-sized versions and large desktop computers were accompanied by laptops and then tablets, electronic test instrumentation has also seen a portable revolution over the past couple of decades. Benchtop solutions are still most test engineers’ bread-and-butter when it comes to instrumentation used, and they offer more features compared to their portable counterparts. Still, the natural progression to smaller form factors has resulted in portable instruments that now contain nearly as many test features as benchtop versions from just a few years ago, or even have equal capabilities in some cases.
“Like most other devices we use in our consumer lives, there is a greater demand for longer battery life and lower weight,” Rohde & Schwarz product manager Rich Markley recently told Evaluation Engineering.