so ive been messing around with an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now, mostly listening to HF with the direct sampling hack and running SDR# and sometimes GQRX on my linux box. its been fine honestly, got me into the whole SDR rabbit hole but lately ive been noticing the noise floor is pretty rough especially on 40m and below, and the dynamic range issues are really obvious when theres a strong broadcast station nearby wiping out everything around it.

been looking at the SDRplay RSP1B as a step up, the specs look good on paper — 14-bit ADC, better front end filtering, and SDRuno seems pretty capable. but im also wondering if its worth just saving a bit more and going HackRF even though i know the HackRF has its own tradeoffs with the 8-bit ADC. mostly want it for receive on HF/VHF, dont really need to transmit.

anybody actually made this jump from RTL-SDR to SDRplay and noticed a real difference day to day? not looking for lab results just real world impressions from people actually using it

yeah made that exact jump about 18 months ago and the difference on HF is not subtle at all. the dynamic range improvement is immediately obvious, like within the first hour of using it i could actually copy signals that were just getting buried before. 40m and 80m especially felt totally different. the RSP1B front end handles nearby strong signals way better than the rtl dongle with direct sampling, which always felt like a bit of a kludge anyway even though it works surprisingly well for what it is.

SDRuno takes some getting used to, the UI is honestly a bit of a mess at first and i spent more time than i want to admit just figuring out where everything was. but once you get the hang of it the feature set is solid and the IF gain staging actually makes sense once you understand whats happening. also worth knowing SDRplay devices work fine in SDR# and HDSDR too so you're not locked into SDRuno if you hate it.

HackRF for pure receive only is kind of overkill and the 8-bit dynamic range is actually worse than the RSP1B in a lot of situations, so if you're not doing transmit or wideband stuff like signals intelligence type work the RSP1B is the smarter buy for what you're describing.

dont overlook the RSP1A either if budget is tight, its basically the same thing with slightly different specs and usually cheaper used. i run one alongside a HackRF and honestly for everyday HF listening the SDRplay wins every time, the HackRF sits there mostly when i want to do something weird like replay captures or poke at stuff above a gig.

one thing nobody mentions — get a decent preselector or at least an AM broadcast filter if you're near any high power AM stations, doesnt matter what SDR you buy if youre getting hammered by a 50kw station a few miles away