so ive been messing around with a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about 6 months now, mostly just scanning local repeaters, picking up ADSB traffic, that kind of thing. its been a blast honestly and now im kind of falling down the rabbit hole. been reading about the SDRplay RSP1A and the HackRF One and im trying to figure out which direction to go.

the RSP1A seems like a cleaner receive-only upgrade, better dynamic range, the 12-bit ADC vs the 8-bit on the rtl dongle, and SDRuno actually looks pretty decent from the screenshots ive seen. but then the HackRF does transmit too which opens up a whole other world. problem is i mostly just want to listen and learn, maybe eventually do some weak signal stuff or look at satellite downlinks.

anyone actually used both? is the SDRplay noticeably better for HF receive or am i going to be disappointed compared to what i read online. also not sure if i need SDRuno or if gqrx or SDR# works fine with it on linux. my main machine is ubuntu 22.

Had the RSP1A for about two years and coming from the rtl-SDR dongle the difference on HF is pretty significant, especially below 10 MHz where the dongle just kind of falls apart. The direct sampling mod on the v3 dongle is ok but its not the same. The RSP1A has proper HF coverage and the preselection filters make a real difference when youre near strong AM broadcast stations.

SDRuno works fine but honestly i mostly use it with SDR++ now which has come a long way and handles the RSP devices well. On linux you can use SoapySDR with the RSP drivers and then most software just works through that layer. gqrx will see it no problem that way.

The HackRF transmit thing sounds appealing but the receive performance is actually worse than the RSP1A in my experience — the noise figure isnt great and the 8-bit ADC hurts it. If you mostly want to listen id go RSP1A without much hesitation. If you eventually want to get into stuff like replay attacks or portapack experiments then maybe HackRF but thats a whole different direction.

yeah the hackrf transmit sounds cool until you realize how much work it actually is to do anything useful with it lol. i went that route and spent more time fighting with gnu radio flowgraphs than actually doing anything fun. the receive side is honestly mediocre, my rtl dongle sometimes feels comparable on VHF which says a lot.

for satellite work the RSP1A is solid, been using mine with gpredict and a simple eggbeater antenna for NOAA and some cubesats and it pulls in signals the dongle would miss. if linux is your main thing just go with the SoapySDR path like the other guy said, took me maybe an afternoon to sort it out the first time.