so ive been using a cheapo RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly just scanning around, decoding NOAA weather sats, poking at ADS-B, the usual stuff people do when they first fall down this rabbit hole. works fine honestly but i keep reading about the SDRplay stuff and the HackRF and i cant figure out which direction makes more sense to go.

the RSP1B seems like the obvious step up if you just want better receive performance, wider dynamic range, that kind of thing. but then the HackRF can transmit which opens up a whole different set of things you can do. im not licensed yet (working on my tech) so transmitting isnt even legal for me right now but still. the price difference isnt that huge when you look at what you get.

main stuff i want to do is meteor scatter decoding, maybe some P25 trunk following with SDR trunk, and ive been curious about WSPR reception to see what bands are doing what. is the RSP1B actually that much better than the v3 dongle for that kind of stuff or am i just going to end up buying both eventually anyway

honestly for receive-only work the RSP1B is a pretty significant step up from the v3, especially for anything that needs real dynamic range - like if you're anywhere near broadcast FM the RTL-SDR can get a bit overwhelmed even with a good filter. for WSPR reception specifically the RSP1B is noticeably better, the noise floor improvement is real not just spec sheet marketing.

that said if you eventually want to do anything transmit side - even just testing, messing around with signal generators, whatever - the HackRF is kind of its own thing. the receive performance on the HackRF is actually not as good as the RSP1B in most comparisons ive seen, the noise figure is worse, but it covers DC to 6 GHz and can TX up to about 10 dBm which is basically nothing power-wise but still useful for certain things.

for what you described - meteor scatter, P25 trunking, WSPR RX - id probably just go SDRplay. SDR trunk works fine with it and HDSDR or SDR++ both support it well. you might still end up getting a HackRF later but thats a different tool for different reasons

yeah i went through almost the exact same thing lol. ended up with both obviously because thats just how it goes. but if i had to pick one starting from the RTL-SDR id go RSP1B just because for the kind of monitoring stuff you described it actually matters that your receiver doesnt stink. meteor scatter decoding especially - you want every bit of sensitivity you can get, those pings are short.

one thing nobody mentioned to me when i was starting out: whatever you get, spend some time on the software side too. SDR++ is really good these days, way better than SDRsharp was when i started, and getting the decimation and gain settings right makes a bigger difference than people realize. ive seen guys with expensive gear get worse results than someone with a tuned RTL-SDR setup just because they never learned the software side of it