so ive been running an old FT-450D for about 4 years and honestly it served me well but the waterfall was always kind of an afterthought on that thing and i got tired of squinting at it. picked up a used IC-7300 a few weeks back from a guy in the club who was upgrading to a 7610 and figured id share some thoughts since i spent like 3 months reading threads like this before buying.

first thing — the touchscreen took some getting used to. i kept accidentally changing stuff when i was just trying to rest my hand on the desk near it. had to move my mic stand. small thing but nobody mentioned that anywhere. the real time spectrum scope is genuinely useful though, not just a gimmick, i actually caught a pileup forming on 17m that i wouldve missed completely just spinning the dial.

audio out of the box sounds really nice on SSB, better than i expected. did have to tweak the TX EQ a bit because my voice apparently sounds like a wet cardboard box according to my buddy in ohio. also the direct sampling architecture does seem to make a difference on crowded bands, 40m at night is actually usable now which was kind of miserable on the 450.

only gripe so far is the fan kicks on pretty aggressively when youre running any kind of power. not loud enough to be a real problem but its noticeable. shack is in a spare bedroom so maybe thats why it bothers me. anyway if anybodys on the fence about the 7300 for a first real HF rig or an upgrade from something older its hard to argue with what you get for the price these days.

the touchscreen thing is real, i did the exact same thing for the first week. eventually just stopped leaning on the desk i guess. you can also lock the touchscreen if you dig into the menus, theres a setting for it, though i forget exactly where it is off the top of my head — somewhere under function or maybe the set menu. worth poking around.

the fan on mine does the same, seems like it comes on earlier than it probably needs to but icom probably just tuned it conservative. havent had any heat issues and i run it at 100w through a fan dipole pretty regularly. overall still think its one of the best bang for buck rigs out there right now especially used, the guy who made the 7610 upgrade probably paid a lot for not that much more in actual on-air performance depending on what youre doing.

congrats on the upgrade. i went from an old ts-590 to mine and the waterfall difference alone was worth it honestly. one thing i noticed with the TX audio — if you havent tried playing with the bass and treble cut in the transmit menu theres actually a lot you can dial in. took me a while to stop sounding like i was calling from inside a tunnel. also get someone to give you an honest audio report on pskreporter or just ask around on 40m, people will tell you straight up if something sounds off.