so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now mostly doing aircraft stuff and some amateur band monitoring and honestly its been fine for what it is but im starting to feel the limitations especially on HF below 25 MHz where the direct sampling mode is just kind of mediocre at best

been looking at either picking up a HackRF One or jumping straight to the SDRplay RSPdx and the price difference is pretty significant, HackRF is around $300-ish for the real one (not the clones which i hear are hit or miss) and the RSPdx is like $200 but obviously they do completely different things

my main use case is honestly just HF monitoring, shortwave broadcast, some 40m and 80m listening, maybe poking around on 630m if i ever get a decent antenna for it. not really interested in transmitting so the HackRF's TX capability doesnt mean much to me. just want better sensitivity and dynamic range than what im getting now

anyone running the RSPdx with SDRuno or maybe SDR++ and have opinions? also does the RSPdx actually handle strong local broadcast stations without totally collapsing or do you still need external filtering

had both at different points and honestly for pure receive-only HF work the RSPdx isnt even close, the HackRF is a great do-everything tool but its noise figure on HF is pretty rough and you really feel it when youre trying to dig out weak signals. the RSPdx has actual preselectors and the dynamic range is night and day difference especially with strong broadcasters nearby

i run mine with SDR++ now instead of SDRuno, nothing against SDRuno but SDR++ just feels snappier and the interface clicks better for me personally. the RSPdx does handle strong stations reasonably well but if you have a really powerful MW broadcaster close by you might still want an attenuator or a bandpass filter in line, i had a 50kw station about 30 miles out that was causing some IMD issues until i threw a simple high pass filter on it

for what you're describing, 40m 80m general listening and shortwave, the RSPdx is the right tool. save the HackRF purchase for when you actually need wideband TX or want to do something like replay attacks or spectrum painting or whatever

the clone HackRF situation is actually worse than hit or miss these days, seen a few people get ones that couldnt even do a proper loopback test and the TX power was way off spec. if you go that route just buy from Great Scott Gadgets directly or a known reseller

but yeah if youre not transmitting the RSPdx makes more sense for your use case, i mostly just wanted to throw in the clone warning cause i see people get burned on that regularly. 630m is fun if you can ever get a suitable antenna together, theres more activity on that band than most people expect