All new cars manufactured post 1996 are required to be OBDII compliant, therefore your Astra is. And yes, the cheap Chinese scanners work well. I've got both the OP-COM reader/programmer and ELM327 bluetooth readers, both of which do work well. Only issue I have is with the BT ELM327, which doesn't seem to like Opels for some reason (when I use it with the Torque app on my phone or tablet).