so ive been messing with a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about 6 months now and honestly its been great for just poking around HF with the direct sampling mode, listening to some MW broadcast, picking up NOAA weather sats, all that stuff. but ive been reading a lot about the SDRplay RSP1C and people seem to really love it for HF specifically.

my question is mostly around whether the RSPdx or even the RSP1C is actually worth the jump from like a $30 dongle to $100-200. i know the specs on paper look better — wider dynamic range, better ADC, no need for that upconverter hack — but does it translate to a real world difference when youre just casually monitoring 40m or scanning around shortwave? im not doing anything serious, no serious decoding work or anything, just kind of exploring what's out there on the bands.

also currently running SDR# on windows and it works fine but ive heard SDRuno which comes with the RSPplay is actually pretty good. anyone compare the two? my antenna situation is pretty modest, just a random wire out the window which is probably the bigger limiting factor anyway

honest answer — yeah you'll notice a difference on HF, especially below 10 MHz. the RTL-SDR direct sampling mode works but it's noisy and the dynamic range just isn't there when you've got strong broadcast stations nearby splattering all over the place. had the same setup as you for a while and switching to an RSP1C was pretty eye opening, mostly just how much cleaner the noise floor looked in SDRuno. that said with a random wire out a window you might be picking up more noise from inside the house than from the SDR itself honestly.

SDRuno took me a bit to get used to, the UI is kind of unintuitive at first, lots of floating windows everywhere. but once you figure it out it's solid. still keep SDR# around for some plugins that don't exist in SDRuno.

I went the HackRF route instead of SDRplay and kind of regret it for receive-only stuff. the HackRF is cool because tx capable and all that but the receive performance is noticeably worse than even a decent RTL-SDR setup in some situations, higher noise figure and all. if you're just listening the RSP stuff makes more sense. though if you ever want to do any transmit experimenting the HackRF opens up a lot of doors with GNU Radio etc