Best SDR unit in 2025?

[Troon_Patrol]

I've been playing a lot with RF tech lately and I keep coming back to the Hack RF1 as the best unit for greatest widest range of signals I want to play with and most bells and whistles. At the moment it retails for around $350 USD.

I'm planing on using it for analyzing and playing with signals 125khz all the way up to about to 6ghz most pen testing and such. I looked into gathering individual modules to broadcast the signals I needed to analyze and even though they were dirt cheap gathering over a dozen of the units for frequencies I'd want to explore didn't seem worth the time the solder up my own shit.

If anyone has any opinions or suggestions for better devices let me know. At the moment I'm settled on this unit.

 

[888Flux]

I posted some recommendations over here in our Ham radio thread:

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/ham-radio.174222/post-18752238

It all depends on what you want to do. 125 kHz to 6 GHz is a wide range.

For 50 MHz and above the HackRF is a good choice. The LimeSDR is the next step above the HackRF and has full transmit capabilities with wide software support.

There do exist "DC to Daylight" SDR platforms but ones that are both TX and RX capable will run you several thousand dollars.

Btw, if you don't have one already you should get a TXCO for the HackRF if yours did not come with one.

 

[Another Char Clone]

I strongly recommend Airspy HF Discovery for HF and under, I can hear electric motors humming at 100KHz with it. It is reception only however. Get one of those Chinese USB powered active loop antennas with an SMA connector to listen to HF, but I don't know how hard is it to find it these days.