so ive been running an old TS-590SG for about four years and always kind of assumed id stick with Kenwood because i know the menus and the ergonomics just made sense to me. but i kept seeing people rave about the 7300 and my buddy down the road let me sit at his shack and play with his for an afternoon and that was basically it, i ordered one that night.

first thing i noticed is the waterfall is genuinely useful and not just a gimmick like i thought it would be. on 40m at night you can just watch the band fill up and jump on a clear spot before you even have to listen around, which sounds lazy but its actually saved me a lot of time during pile-ups. the touch screen took some getting used to and i still occasionally fat-finger the wrong filter setting but its mostly fine now.

receive audio is really good, maybe slightly warmer than the Kenwood but i honestly cant say if thats real or just me wanting to justify the purchase. RF direct sampling is interesting in theory and i read a bunch of stuff about it before buying but in practice i just use the radio and dont think about the architecture that much.

one thing that bugs me - the fan kicks on pretty aggressively even at like 50 watts which surprised me. the 590 was quieter in that regard. not a dealbreaker but worth mentioning if your shack is a bedroom and youre doing late night rag chews.

anyway thats my two cents. still not selling the Kenwood because im paranoid about having a backup rig but the 7300 is my daily driver now.

the fan thing is real and its one of the more common complaints i see on the reflectors. mine does the same thing. someone told me you can adjust the fan curve in a hidden menu but i never bothered digging into it, maybe look into that if it really bothers you.

agree on the waterfall being more useful than expected. i was skeptical too but for finding weak signals buried in QRM its honestly changed how i operate on the lower bands. that said i know a few guys who think it makes people lazy operators and there might be something to that, you stop really listening as carefully when youre just clicking on a trace.

what antenna are you running with it? im curious if youre noticing any difference in how the ATU handles things versus the 590, i had some weirdness with my end-fed on the Icom but it turned out to be a ground loop issue in my shack, not the radio.

ive been thinking about this exact upgrade for months, good to hear a real comparison from someone who actually ran the 590 for a while and not just youtube reviewers who owned it for two days. the fan noise thing is a bit concerning since my shack is literally just my home office and my wife already complains about the TS-480 i have in there. might just wait for a used 7300 to come up on qrz classifieds at this point, theyre all over the place and usually in good shape.