so ive been using WSJT-X for a while now mostly for FT8 and it logs to its own adif file which is fine for casual stuff but i got talked into entering the ARRL DX contest this year by a guy at my club and now im trying to figure out what logging software to actually use for a real contest environment

my buddy runs N1MM and swears by it, says its the industry standard or whatever for contesting, but i looked at Log4OM and it seems a lot more polished on the surface and handles general logging day to day better which matters to me since i dont want two separate programs for contest vs normal operation

main thing im worried about is dupes and the real-time scoring stuff, i was watching someone run a contest station last field day and they had everything just populating automatically, rate meter, multipliers, the whole deal and im not sure Log4OM does all that to the same degree? also does WSJT-X play nice with N1MM if i want to do FT8 contacts during a contest that allows digital modes, i remember reading something about UDP port conflicts or something but i cant remember where

running windows 10, IC-7300 if that matters

N1MM is honestly kind of ugly and the learning curve is a bit steep at first but once you get it set up for a specific contest it's hard to beat for actual contesting. the real-time scoring, the telnet cluster integration, bandmap, all that stuff is just dialed in for contest use. Log4OM is nice but its more of a general logbook that can do contests rather than a contest logger that can do general logging if you see what i mean.

for the WSJT-X thing yeah you can run them together, N1MM has a WSJT-X integration where it listens on a UDP port and pulls in the QSOs automatically as you make them. you set WSJT-X to send logged QSOs to N1MM and it just works, ive been doing it for a couple years with no issues. just make sure you set the UDP server address in WSJT-X settings to 127.0.0.1 and match the port N1MM is listening on, default is 2237 i think. IC-7300 with N1MM over USB serial is pretty standard stuff too so that shouldnt give you any trouble.

i use Log4OM for everything except actual serious contesting and i think thats kind of the honest answer about what its for. it tracks awards, handles LOTW and eQSL upload really smoothly, looks good, the stats are great. but when im doing CQ WW or something where every second counts im loading up N1MM because thats just what it was built for

the dupe checking in N1MM is instantaneous and the way it handles exchange logging with just a few keystrokes once you have the macros set is really slick. also the community around N1MM for contest-specific stuff is huge so if something isnt working there's usually someone who already figured it out. my only gripe is syncing between the two but i just export adif from N1MM after a contest and import it into Log4OM, takes maybe two minutes