so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now and its been great for getting into this stuff, airband, NOAA weather, poking around the 70cm repeaters and whatnot. but im starting to hit the walls of it especially on HF where i know the direct sampling mode is kind of a hack.

been looking at either picking up a HackRF One or going the SDRplay RSP1A route. the HackRF is obviously more appealing because you can transmit (1mW but still) and the frequency range is insane, but i keep reading that the receiver sensitivity isnt as good as dedicated receive-only stuff. the RSP1A seems like a more serious RX-focused device and the 1kHz to 2GHz range covers pretty much everything i actually care about.

main use would be HF shortwave listening, monitoring local repeaters and simplex traffic, maybe some APRS decoding with Direwolf, and just generally exploring. not doing any transmit experimentation. SDR++ has been my main software lately and i know it supports both.

anyone run both or made this choice? the $50-60 price difference feels significant but maybe not if the SDRplay is just meaningfully better for RX. also wondering about driver stability on linux since thats my main setup.

had both at the same time for a while actually. the HackRF is a cool piece of kit but if you're primarily doing receive work the RSP1A just walks all over it in that department. dynamic range is noticeably better and on HF crowded band conditions the HackRF can get pretty overwhelmed - you'll see a lot of intermod garbage near strong broadcast stations. the RSP1A handles that much cleaner especially if you engage the IF notch filters in SDRuno or whatever software you're using.

that said i still keep the HackRF around because sometimes you just want to replay a signal or poke at something that needs TX capability even at milliwatt levels. for your use case though - pure monitoring, APRS, HF listening - the SDRplay is the right call. linux driver situation for SDRplay has improved a lot, the sdrplay_api package installs pretty cleanly these days and SDR++ picks it up no problem. RTL-SDR on linux is basically just plug in and it works so the step up isn't dramatic.

honestly for APRS just keep using the rtl-sdr, direwolf doesnt care and its plenty sensitive for that. the upgrade makes more sense if HF is where you want to go. i jumped from the v3 to an RSP2 (older model but similar story) and the HF experience is just a completely different thing, actual antenna ports, no weird direct sampling artifacts. worth it for shortwave listening alone imo