so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i keep landing in the same spot which is basically nowhere. my current setup is a pretty basic shack, got a decent ground mounted vertical outside and a longwire in the attic that i mostly use for 40m at night. right now im running an old Kenwood TS-440 that a friend gave me which honestly still works great but i want something modern with a built in tuner and ideally a waterfall display because i got addicted to using one at a club station.

the IC-7300 seems like the obvious choice and pretty much everyone online says just get that but then i keep reading about the 991A covering VHF/UHF too and since i dont have a separate VHF rig that starts to sound appealing even though i barely operate 2m from home. the 7300 supposedly has better receive and the roofing filter situation is supposed to be cleaner but honestly i cant tell if that actually matters for the kind of casual HF operating i do which is mostly ragchewing and some PSK when im bored.

has anyone actually used both or switched from one to the other, would love to hear if the 991A's VHF thing is actually useful day to day or if it just sounds good on paper

had the 991A for about a year before i switched to the 7300 and honestly the VHF thing sounds better than it is in practice, at least for me. the 991A is a solid radio dont get me wrong but you can tell Yaesu was trying to do a lot of things at once with that design and the HF receive just feels a little softer compared to the 7300 side by side. not night and day but noticeable when you're trying to dig something out of the noise on 20m late at night.

the 7300 waterfall is also just really good, like stupidly addictive, way more than i expected. and the built in tuner on both is pretty mediocre honestly so if your antennas are anything other than close to resonant you might want an external one eventually anyway. if you really think you'll use 2m go 991A, if 2m is just a nice-to-have the 7300 is probably gonna make you happier on HF day to day

i went through the same exact debate lol. ended up with the 7300 and zero regrets but i also just bought a cheap baofeng brick for the occasional 2m net so that kinda solved the problem. the 7300 SDR architecture really does make a difference once you start operating on crowded band conditions, the panadapter alone changes how you find activity. anyway the 991A isnt a bad radio at all, i just think for home base HF the 7300 is purpose built for that and it shows