so ive been using a basic RTL-SDR V3 dongle for probably two years now, mostly just poking around on aircraft and doing some wideband listening, a bit of APRS decoding and whatever. its been fine for that stuff but ive been getting more into HF monitoring lately and the direct sampling mode on the V3 is... okay. not great. a lot of images and the noise floor is kind of rough depending on the band.

anyway someone at the club mentioned the SDRplay RSP1B and said it was a genuine step up for HF work. ive been looking at it and the specs do look better on paper — 1kHz to 2GHz, 10 MHz bandwidth, better dynamic range, all that. and it works with SDRuno which i know is their software but ive also seen people running it through SDR++ which is honestly what i prefer using anyway.

my question is basically is it actually worth the ~$100 or so price difference or is it more of a sidegrade kind of thing. im not doing anything serious with it, no contesting, mostly just wanna copy some shortwave broadcasts and maybe mess around with decoding WSPR spots. if anyone has run both i'd be curious what you actually noticed in practice not just the spec sheet stuff

I ran an RTL-SDR V3 for about 18 months before picking up an RSP1A (previous version, same basic idea as the 1B) and honestly the HF difference was noticeable enough that I didn't regret it. The direct sampling path on the RTL is functional but you do get a lot of birdies and the sensitivity just isn't there compared to a proper front end. The RSPdx is even better if you care about MW and the lower HF bands but that's another step up in price.

For WSPR decoding and shortwave listening the RSP1B should do you fine. SDR++ works great with it via the SDRPlay API, just gotta make sure you install the API first or the software won't see the device at all. That trips people up sometimes. One thing though — if your antenna situation isn't sorted out the radio upgrade won't help as much as you'd hope. The RTL-SDR's noise issues on HF are real but a lot of what people blame on the dongle is actually RF getting in through a bad feedline or a too-short antenna.

yeah the RSP1B is a solid box, I have one. for wspr it's honestly overkill though like even the v3 dongle decodes wspr spots fine in my experience, the signals are so weak you're limited by antenna way before you're limited by the SDR front end. where the SDRplay stuff actually shines is crowded band conditions — the dynamic range thing is real and if you're trying to listen to a weak station next to a strong broadcaster the RSP handles it better. that said $100 is $100 and if the RTL is giving you workable results it's not urgent. maybe try a better antenna first and see if that fixes the noise floor complaints before spending anything