so ive had my IC-7300 for about 4 years now and honestly its a great radio, no real complaints, but ive been eyeballing some of the newer stuff and wondering if theres anything that would actually be a meaningful upgrade or if im just doing the classic ham thing where you convince yourself you need new gear when you dont

main thing i do is SSB on 40 and 20, some occasional digital modes on 10 when the band cooperates, and ive been dabbling with WSPR just to see whats going on propagation wise. the 7300 handles all of this fine. my shack is pretty basic, the radio sitting on a desk, an LDG tuner, and a wire antenna out the window which i know isnt ideal but its what i can do from this apartment

ive been looking at the 7610 mostly because the dual watch thing sounds useful and the roofing filters are supposedly better. also looked at the Kenwood TS-890 but man that price difference is hard to justify when i cant even put up a decent antenna. anyone gone from a 7300 to something in that range and actually noticed a real world difference, not just spec sheet stuff?

honestly if your biggest limitation is a wire antenna out an apartment window the radio is probably not your bottleneck right now. ive run a 7300 and borrowed a friends 7610 for a weekend once and yeah the 7610 is nicer, the panadapter feels snappier and the roofing filter thing is real when the bands get crowded, but on 40m SSB with modest antennas youre probably not going to notice a dramatic difference in your actual contacts made

the TS-890 is a really nice rig though, used one at a club station and the recieve is just... cleaner somehow, hard to explain. but again thats in a good antenna environment. if you do move someday and can put up a real antenna then yeah id say the upgrade makes more sense. for now might be worth sinking money into an antenna situation if thats at all possible

i went 7300 to 7610 last year and the dual watch actually does get used more than i expected, mainly for monitoring a dx cluster frequency while working another. the difference in rx on a crowded 40m night is noticeable but like... not life changing. if youre happy with the 7300 theres no burning reason to upgrade imo. save the money