so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly just scanning around HF with an upconverter and listening to some shortwave, weather fax, that kind of thing. works fine honestly but ive been eyeing an SDRplay RSP1B and the price jump isn't crazy but its not nothing either, like $120 vs what i paid for the dongle setup.

main thing im wondering is whether the dynamic range improvement is actually noticeable in practice or if its one of those spec sheet things that doesnt really translate to real world use. i live maybe 8 miles from a couple of FM broadcast towers and that bleed has always been annoying even with the software filters in SDR#. figured maybe better hardware would help but idk. anyone actually switched from one to the other and noticed a real difference day to day?

yeah the dynamic range thing is very real, not just a spec sheet number. i went through almost the same situation a couple years back. the RTL dongle with an upconverter is fine for getting started but those FM stations were killing me too, even with a FM trap inline. switched to the RSP1B and the difference on crowded HF bands was immediately obvious, like you stop spending half your time chasing intermod artifacts and just actually listen to stuff.

SDRuno takes some getting used to if you've been on SDR# but its not terrible. one thing i will say is if you're mostly on HF the RSP1B is the right call, but if you ever want to play above like 1.5 GHz for ADS-B or weather satellites or whatever then you might want to think about what you actually want to do long term because the RSP lineup has some coverage gaps depending on which model. for your FM bleed problem though yeah it helps a lot, the front end just handles it better.

honestly for FM intermod the first thing id try before spending money is just a good bandstop filter, you can get dedicated FM traps for like 10 bucks and they make a surprising difference even with the cheap dongle. not saying dont get the SDRplay, its a genuinely better piece of hardware, but if the main complaint is FM bleed its worth throwing a filter at the problem first and seeing how much is left over.

i run a HackRF for stuff where i need to transmit (its technically capable of TX though its not exactly a precision rig) and kept my RTL-SDR around for dedicated ADS-B because its basically disposable at that price. different tools honestly.