so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 with the direct sampling mod for HF for probably 8 months now and honestly its been decent for what it is but im starting to wonder if the SDRplay is actually worth the jump in price. the sensitivity difference is supposed to be pretty significant but i cant really find a good apples to apples comparison that isnt either a product page or someone who clearly got the SDRplay for free to review it.

my main use case is just monitoring 40m and 80m during the evenings, some WSPR decoding, and occasionally poking around the MW broadcast band. not doing anything crazy. running SDR# on windows and ive played around with GQRX a little but keep going back to SDR# mostly out of habit i think.

anyone actually made that jump and regretted it or thought it was worth it? the RSP1A specifically, not the RSP2 or the dx version, those are way out of what i want to spend right now

made exactly that jump about two years ago, went from the v3 direct sampling to an RSP1A and yeah the difference on HF is real. the noise floor is noticeably lower and the dynamic range is just... better. like on 40m in the evening when the band gets busy you stop getting that intermod mess as much. that said if youre happy with what youre hearing on the RTL i wouldnt say you NEED to upgrade, its more like you start noticing things you were missing once you have the better hardware. WSPR decoding specifically i did see better decode counts after switching but that might also have been antenna day who knows.

SDRuno takes some getting used to if youre coming from SDR#, the interface is a lot to take in at first but once you get it configured it works well. you can actually run it in SDR# too with a plugin last i checked so you dont have to switch software if you dont want to.

honestly the rtl-sdr v3 direct sampling is pretty impressive for what it costs but yeah the ADC resolution difference between that and the RSP1A is significant on paper, 8 bit vs 12/14 bit depending on mode. whether that translates to something you actually notice depends a lot on your antenna and local noise situation. if youre in a noisy suburban environment the SDRplay isnt going to magically fix RFI from your neighbors switching supplies or whatever.

one thing worth mentioning, have you tried upconverter route instead? an ham-it-up or similar gets you a lot of the HF sensitivity back on the RTL without the full SDRplay cost. probably not as clean but its another option in between. i ran that combo for a while before going to a HackRF and it was pretty usable.