so ive been messing around with an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now and honestly its been great for just poking around, listening to ACARS, doing some ADS-B stuff with dump1090, that kind of thing. but im starting to feel the limits of it especially on HF where the direct sampling mod only gets you so far and the noise floor is just kinda rough compared to what people post about on the reddit.

so now im trying to decide whether to step up to an SDRplay RSP1A or just go all in on a HackRF One. the price difference isnt huge, RSP1A is what, around $110 and HackRF is like $300-350 for a real one not a clone. but the HackRF does transmit which the RSP1A obviously doesnt. problem is i dont actually NEED to transmit right now, im mostly just trying to get a better receiver for the HF bands and maybe do some decoding with WSJT or JS8Call just to see how the band sounds through an SDR compared to my actual radio.

anybody gone through this same decision? i feel like the RSP1A is probably the smarter buy for pure receive but the HackRF is more future proof if i ever want to do anything else. or am i totally off base here and should just look at an Airspy HF+ Discovery instead

had almost this exact same situation about two years ago. ended up going RSP1A and honestly for HF receive it absolutely destroys the RTL-SDR, like not even close. the noise floor improvement alone is worth it and the 14-bit ADC makes a real difference when youre trying to pull weak signals out. SDRuno works fine with it though i mostly run it through SDR++ now which is way smoother.

the HackRF thing — i get the appeal but keep in mind its only 8-bit which actually makes the RSP1A a better pure receiver even though HackRF costs more. the transmit capability on HackRF is cool but its not like you can just use it as a radio, youre really doing more like signal generation and experimentation stuff. if you want to eventually transmit with SDR properly youre probably looking at a LimeSDR or something anyway. for what you described, just get the RSP1A and spend the leftover money on a decent upconverter if you need it or a LNA.

Airspy HF+ Discovery is genuinely the answer if HF receive is the main goal, way better dynamic range than the RSP1A in my experience. But it's also more expensive and doesnt cover VHF/UHF so depends what you want. I use one dedicated just to 40m and 80m wspr monitoring and it runs 24/7 without issues, feeds right into wsprnet.

that said the RSP1A is a totally solid choice and more flexible if you want to scan around above 30mhz too. the HackRF i would not buy just for receiving, the 8 bit thing is a real limitation and you'll notice it.