so ive been messing around with a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about 8 months now, mostly just scanning aircraft ADS-B, some NOAA weather sat stuff, and occasionally listening around the ham bands just to see whats happening. overall its been great for what it cost me like 30 bucks but ive been noticing the noise floor is kind of killing me especially when i try to do anything below 30 MHz, even with the direct sampling mode turned on in SDR# or SDRuno.

a buddy at the club has an SDRplay RSP1A and honestly the difference when he fired it up at the last meeting was pretty noticeable, way cleaner below HF and the dynamic range just seems better when theres strong signals nearby. my RTL tends to get all wobbly when someones running a kilowatt a few hundred kHz away.

my question is basically — is the RSP1A still the go-to in that like 100-130 dollar range or has something changed recently? i keep seeing people mention the RSP2 and also some chatter about HackRF but i know HackRF is more of a transmit capable thing and way more expensive. just trying to figure out if theres a logical next step before i go down a rabbit hole buying stuff i dont need. running windows 10 mostly but i have a pi 4 i could use if needed.

the RSP1A is still solid for that price range honestly. ive had mine for probably 3 years and it just works, SDRuno isnt the prettiest software but it gets the job done and the integration with the hardware is tight. the 1kHz to 2GHz coverage with decent sensitivity below HF is really where it shines over the rtl dongle.

HackRF is a different animal, yes it transmits but the receive performance is actually not as good as the SDRplay in a lot of situations, higher noise floor and only 8 bit ADC vs the RSP1As 14 bit. so if youre purely receiving i wouldnt go HackRF just for the transmit capability you probably wont use anyway. the RSP2 adds some antenna ports and a bias tee but unless you specifically need that stuff the RSP1A is the better value. id say just grab the RSP1A, throw SDRuno on it and youll be happy, especially for HF work.

yeah what he said about the ADC bits matters more than people realize when you've got strong locals. i run an RSPdx now which is the newer one, stepped up from the RSP1A, and the HF performance on that is genuinely impressive for the money. but honestly if youre coming from an rtl dongle the RSP1A is gonna feel like a huge upgrade anyway so dont overthink it.

one thing worth mentioning — whatever you get, spend some time with SDR# or HDSDR with ExtIO before settling on software. SDRuno is fine but some people get on better with the others depending on what they want to do. and if you do the pi route look into SigDigger or CubicSDR, both run decent on ARM.