so ive been messing around with a cheapo RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about 6 months now and honestly its been pretty great for what it is. got it running with SDR# on the shack PC, been doing some ADS-B, listening around 40m with a long wire, picking up NOAA weather sats which is honestly still cool every time. but HF performance is kind of meh even with the direct sampling mod, theres a lot of images and the dynamic range just feels limited compared to what people describe.

been looking at the SDRplay RSP1B and the price isnt insane, like $100 range. but then part of me wonders if i should just save up for a HackRF and have something i can actually transmit with for experiments. i know the HackRF receive side isnt as good as a dedicated RX device but the flexibility is appealing.

mostly interested in HF monitoring, maybe some satellite stuff, and ive been wanting to play with decoding some utility stuff. not really doing any serious contesting or anything with this, its more of a rabbit hole hobby within the hobby if that makes sense. anyone gone through this same upgrade path and have thoughts?

went from the same RTL dongle to an RSP1B about two years ago and honestly the difference on HF is pretty significant. the noise floor drops noticeably and you stop seeing all those phantom signals from images. the 10MHz bandwidth you can observe at once is also just genuinely useful, especially when youre trying to figure out whats going on across a whole band segment. SDRuno is fine, a bit clunky but it works, and it also runs in SDR# with the right plugin if you prefer that.

the HackRF thing i get the appeal but the receive specs are pretty mediocre. like the noise figure is high and it shows on HF, youre not gonna be happy with it for serious listening. its a great tool for transmit experiments and protocol work but id say if receive quality is the goal the RSP1B is the smarter buy. you could always add a HackRF later for the TX side if you get into that stuff. they serve different purposes really.

HackRF is fun but yeah the RX is mediocre, i use mine mostly for transmitting test signals and replay stuff, not for actual listening. for HF monitoring id stick with a proper RX-focused device. the RSP2 is worth looking at too if you can stretch the budget a bit, has multiple antenna ports which is actually handy. also have you tried SDR++ yet? way better than SDR# imo, cleaner interface and the modules system is nice. works with basically everything including RTL dongles so you can try it now before you even upgrade.