so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly doing ADSB and poking around on HF with the direct sampling mod. works fine honestly for what it is, but ive been tempted by the SDRplay RSP1B for a while now. the price difference is pretty significant though, like 3-4x depending on where you get it, and im not sure the jump is actually worth it for what i do.

mainly i listen on HF, scan some local stuff, occasionally decode some APRS and weather fax. nothing super serious. the RTL noise floor is kind of annoying sometimes especially down in the lower HF bands but i dont know if thats just a fundamental limitation or if better hardware would actually fix it. ive messed with SDRangel and SDR++ and the RTL-SDR just feels kind of rough at times.

has anyone actually gone from an RTL dongle to an SDRplay and noticed a real difference in daily use? not talking about benchmarks, just actual use. and would a HackRF even make sense here or is that more for transmit stuff?

yeah the jump is noticeable, not gonna lie. i went from the same RTL-SDR v3 to an RSP1A a couple years back and the HF situation improves quite a bit. the dynamic range difference is real, especially if you're anywhere near a strong AM broadcast station. the RTL just gets stomped and you end up with all this IMD garbage across the band. the SDRplay handles it way better. not perfect, still need a good antenna and maybe a bandpass filter depending on your situation, but its a cleaner experience overall.

for what you're describing though, weather fax, APRS, general scanning, i mean honestly the RTL might be fine and youre just chasing a problem that a better antenna would fix first. before i spent the money on SDRplay i wish someone had told me to try a simple 9:1 unun on a random wire, that cleaned up my HF listening more than swapping hardware did initially.

HackRF is a different thing entirely. the receive performance is actually worse than a good RTL-SDR in a lot of ways, its a wide open architecture meant for flexibility and transmit capability not sensitivity. dont buy it if you just want to listen better.

SDRplay is worth it imo. i have the RSP2 and the difference on 40 and 80m compared to my old dongle was pretty significant, clearer audio, less birdies, the software (SDRuno) is a bit clunky but it works. though honestly i switched to SDR++ for everything now because SDRuno kept doing weird stuff on my laptop.

one thing nobody mentioned - the RTL-SDR direct sampling mod is kind of a bandaid and you're running without any filtering up front which is part of why it sounds rough. the SDRplay has proper front end filtering built in. thats actually the bigger deal than the ADC bits or whatever.