so ive been messing around with an RTL-SDR v3 for maybe 8 months now and honestly its been a great intro but im starting to notice the limitations more and more especially down on HF. i have the direct sampling mod enabled and yeah it works but the noise floor is pretty rough and strong broadcast stations are stomping all over everything even with a decent bandpass filter inline.

been looking at the SDRplay RSP1A since its like $110 or so and has the built in preselectors and the 12bit ADC which should theoretically help a lot with dynamic range. but i also keep seeing people say just save up for a HackRF if you want to transmit eventually. problem is i dont really need TX capability right now, im mostly doing shortwave listening and trying to decode some of the utility stuff on 40 and 20m.

anyone gone from the RTL dongle to the RSP1A specifically? was it actually a noticeable jump or is this one of those things where the antenna situation matters way more and the receiver difference is kinda marginal in practice

went through exactly this about two years ago. short answer is yes, the RSP1A is a meaningful step up from the v3 for HF work, the preselector filters alone make a difference because you stop getting that AM broadcast hash bleeding into everything. the dynamic range improvement is real too — i was seeing intermod products with the RTL on 40m that just went away with the RSPdx i ended up getting (slightly pricier than the 1A but similar story).

that said youre right that antenna is still like 80% of the equation. i made the jump and was initially underwhelmed until i finally sorted out my feedline common mode noise situation. after a choke at the feedpoint things got dramatically better and then the receiver quality started to actually matter. if you're on a random wire thrown out the window or something the RSP1A will still be limited by that.

HackRF thing — honestly the transmit side on the HackRF is kinda mediocre, low output power and the noise performance isnt great for receive compared to something purpose built for RX. if you dont need TX i wouldnt buy it just in case. the RSP1A would serve you better for what you described.

im in kind of the same boat actually, still on the rtl-sdr but been eyeballing the SDRplay stuff. one thing i'll throw out there is SDRuno, the software that comes with SDRplay, has a pretty steep learning curve compared to just running SDR# with the rtl. not a dealbreaker but took me a bit to figure out when i tried it at a friends shack. CubicSDR also works with the RSP stuff and i find it a bit more intuitive personally.