so ive had my TS-590SG for about four years and honestly it was a great radio but i kept seeing everyone and their brother talking about the 7300 and the waterfall display and i finally just ordered one last month. been running it for about three weeks now.

first thing — the waterfall is genuinely as useful as people say, i was skeptical because i thought it was just a gimmick but being able to actually see propagation changing in real time and spot signals before you even tune to them is kind of a game changer for me, especially on 40m where things get crowded fast.

second thing i wasnt expecting — the audio out of the box is kind of harsh on receive compared to the Kenwood. maybe im just used to the 590 but i spent like two days tweaking the DSP settings before it started sounding right to me. treble rolloff helped a lot.

the touch screen is mostly fine but i keep accidentally hitting things when i reach for the VFO knob, probably just muscle memory from the old layout. also the built in ATU is way more limited than i expected, it really doesnt like my 80m dipole when im trying to work the low end of the band.

overall though really happy with it. anyone else gone from a Kenwood to the 7300 and noticed the audio thing or am i just crazy

not crazy at all, the receive audio on the 7300 took some getting used to for me too. i came from an FT-991A not a Kenwood but same deal — the icom DSP has a kind of bright, almost clinical sound by default. what worked for me was pulling down around 2.5-3kHz in the parametric EQ and bumping the bass shelf a little. feels more like listening to SSB is supposed to sound if that makes sense.

the ATU thing is a real limitation though. icom kind of buried that in the specs and a lot of people dont realize until they're trying to match something weird. i ended up adding an LDG external tuner for anything outside a pretty narrow SWR range and the 7300 just plays nice with it, you basically bypass the internal one and let the LDG do the work. been solid since.

the waterfall spoils you fast. i borrowed a friends radio last year that didnt have one and it felt like flying blind honestly.

yeah the accidental touchscreen taps drove me nuts for the first couple weeks, i almost changed a filter setting mid-QSO once which wouldve been embarassing. you kinda learn to be deliberate about where your hand goes when you reach across the panel. not a huge deal but worth mentioning to anyone coming from a purely knob-based layout.