so ive been running an old TS-570 for probably 8 years now and it still works fine honestly but i kept seeing people rave about the 7300 and finally last month i just bought one. figured id share some thoughts since i spent way too long reading comparisons before pulling the trigger.

first thing — the waterfall. i knew it was supposed to be good but actually using it day to day is a different thing. found a few stations on 40m last night just by watching signals pop up that i would have completely missed scanning by ear. thats probably the biggest practical difference for me so far.

audio on receive is noticeably better than the kenwood, cleaner somehow, though i suspect some of that is the DSP and i havent really dug into the filter settings yet. the touch screen takes some getting used to, i keep accidentally changing things when im just trying to rest my hand near the rig which is annoying.

one thing i wasnt expecting — the built in antenna tuner is pretty limited. works fine for stuff thats close to resonance but i have a 40m dipole i sometimes use on 15m and the internal tuner just gives up on it. ended up leaving my LDG tuner in line which kind of defeats the purpose. not a dealbreaker but worth knowing if youre coming from a rig with a more capable tuner.

overall really happy with it. shack looks a lot less cluttered too since i got rid of a separate audio interface i was using, the USB audio in the 7300 works great with WSJT-X right out of the box pretty much.

the accidental touchscreen thing drove me crazy for the first month too. i ended up just being really deliberate about where my hand goes. you kind of develop a habit eventually but yeah its not ideal when youre in the middle of a pileup and suddenly your filter bandwidth changed.

re: the tuner — totally agree, its more of a convenience feature than a real wide range tuner. i think icom rates it at like 3:1 which sounds okay on paper but in practice anything remotely weird and it gives up. im running an outboard tuner too. honestly at this point the internal one just handles my fan dipole and thats about it.

the waterfall really does change how you operate though. i find myself just watching it sometimes instead of actually doing anything, which is maybe not the most productive use of time haha

been on a 7300 for about two years now, coming from an FT-450D. the USB audio thing is huge, i remember fighting with virtual audio cable and all that mess on the old setup. now its just plug in and it works basically. the receive audio took me a while to dial in to my liking but once i got the treble and bass settings where i wanted them its really pleasant to listen to for long periods.