[timmaxw]

As a beginner, I've been a big fan of the Digilent Analog Discovery. This guide lists it under "logic analyzers", but it's also a passable oscilloscope if you don't need more than 30MHz bandwidth. Because the target market is undergraduates learning electrical engineering, it's designed to be inexpensive, doesn't take up much space, is easy to get started with, etc.

[T3OU-736]

As a fellow beginner, I have always been a fan of Salee https://www.saleae.com/] stuff, for much the same reasons you describe.

[wrongbaud]

The problem with Saleae IMO is that their current price point is way out of reach for beginners. The software is wonderful (as is the hardware), but it's hard to justify as a newcomer to the hobby at that price point