So ive been running an RTL-SDR v4 dongle for about 8 months now mostly on VHF/UHF stuff, NOAA weather sats, some ACARS, the usual rabbit hole you fall into when you first get one of these things. But lately ive been wanting to get into HF a bit more and i know the rtl needs an upconverter to do that properly while the SDRplay has native HF coverage built in.

My question is whether the RSP1B is actually a significant jump or if the rtl-sdr v4 with its direct sampling mode is good enough that im just wasting money. I see a lot of people online saying the SDRplay is way better but i also see a lot of people perfectly happy running SDR# or SDRuno with just the cheap dongle and an upconverter. I run SDR++ mostly because i found SDRuno kind of clunky to be honest.

Not trying to do anything serious, mostly just want to listen around 40m and maybe some shortwave broadcast stuff. Budget isnt huge.

Honestly for just casual HF listening the v4 in direct sampling mode is probably fine to start with. I ran mine that way for a while before i eventually got an RSP1A and yeah the SDRplay is noticeably cleaner, better dynamic range, and the tuning is smoother — but if youre just wanting to hear 40m SSB and some broadcast shortwave, the dongle will get you there for free basically since you already have it. Throw a decent antenna at it first because that makes way more difference than the receiver on HF.

The SDRplay really starts to shine if you have any strong local signals causing interference because the front end handles overload a lot better than the rtl chipset. If you dont have that problem yet you might not even notice the difference.

yeah i had the same debate and ended up just grabbing a Ham It Up upconverter for my RTL and ran that for probably a year before i sprung for a HackRF. totally different use case obviously since the HackRF is transmit capable but still. the direct sampling on the v4 works but you do get some birdies and the sensitivity isnt amazing. for $30-40 though its hard to complain. SDR++ is the right call btw, SDRuno felt like it was designed by someone who really wanted to make sure you knew it was complicated