so ive been messing around with a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for a few months now, mostly just listening to aircraft on 1090 MHz and poking around the 2m band to see whats happening locally. its been fun and honestly way more capable than i expected for like $30 but i keep seeing people mention the SDRplay and the RSP1A specifically and im wondering if its actually worth the jump in price

my main thing is i want to get better HF coverage, like actually decent HF not just the direct sampling hack on the rtl-sdr which works but honestly feels kinda janky. also i notice a lot of intermod garbage when theres strong FM broadcast stations nearby, the rtl dongle just gets hammered. does the RSP1A handle that better with its preselection filters or whatever they call them

not super interested in the HackRF right now because i dont really need to transmit and the price is higher than i want to spend. just trying to figure out if the SDRplay is a meaningful step up for receive only use or if im just gonna spend $120 and notice basically the same thing

the RSP1A is a real step up, no question. the dynamic range alone makes a huge difference on HF compared to the rtl dongle. direct sampling on those dongles is fine for casual listening but you're right that it's janky — the noise floor is pretty rough and you miss a lot of weak signals. the RSP1A has actual coverage from like 1kHz all the way up and the front end is just cleaner.

the FM broadcast overload thing you mentioned is exactly where you'll notice it most. i live about 2 miles from a bunch of FM towers and my rtl-sdr was basically unusable without an external FM trap. the RSP1A handles it much better, still not perfect if you're super close to a transmitter but noticeably better. SDRuno is a bit of a learning curve if youre coming from SDR# but once you get used to it its fine. worth it if you're actually going to use it seriously for HF work.

honestly i went through the same thing last year and just pulled the trigger on the RSP1A and dont regret it. one thing i'll add is that the SDRplay software SDRuno has gotten a lot better over the last year or so, used to be kinda buggy but recent versions have been pretty stable for me. also works fine with SDR# and HDSDR if you dont want to deal with SDRuno.

if you really want to go deep on HF and you're eventually thinking about decoding stuff like WSPR or doing any kind of signal monitoring the cleaner front end really does matter. you'll start hearing things on 40m and 80m that just werent coming through on the dongle