so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about two years now and honestly its been great for what it is, running SDR# and just scanning around HF with a long wire outside, picking up NOAA weather, that kind of thing. but ive been reading about the SDRplay RSP1B and people keep saying its a huge step up and i cant really tell if thats just marketing or if theres a real audible difference on HF especially.

main thing im curious about is the dynamic range, my RTL-SDR gets absolutely hammered by the local AM broadcast band and a couple shortwave transmitters and everything kind of blooms out. i have the HF converter but its still not great. the RSP1B supposedly handles this better? i dunno, maybe im just not filtering right on my end.

also been looking at the HackRF but i think thats more for transmit capable stuff and im not really doing that, mostly just receive and decoding digital modes. anyone actually own both and can give me a real comparison not just specs from the website

yeah the dynamic range difference is real, its not marketing. the RTL-SDR chips just werent designed for this kind of use, they were dvb-t tuners and the ADC resolution is pretty limiting. the RSP1B has a 14-bit ADC vs the 8-bit in most RTL dongles and you feel that difference on crowded HF bands, especially near broadcast.

i ran both side by side for a while before i sold the dongle. the AM breakthrough problem you're describing is almost completely gone with the SDRplay, and the noise floor is noticeably lower on the weaker stuff. i was picking up some WSPR stations on 40m that i couldnt even see in the waterfall with the RTL. that said if youre mainly doing NOAA and VHF stuff the RTL is honestly fine and hard to beat for the price. for serious HF work though yeah id make the jump.

the HackRF is a different beast, tx capable but the receive performance isnt even as good as the RTL in some ways due to the 8-bit ADC and architecture, its more of a development/experimentation tool than a pure receiver.

dont sleep on adding a good bandpass filter before your RTL either if you havent tried that yet. i was having the same AM broadcast blowout issue and a simple high-pass filter made a huge difference before i eventually upgraded. just saying theres a middle step if budget is a concern right now

but yeah i do have the RSP1A (older version) and its a solid piece of kit, SDRuno is a bit quirky but you can also use it with SDR# with the plugin and that works pretty well. worth it imo if youre spending real time on HF.