Quite a few of the things that distinguish "high end" radios these days are in terms of user interface, and connections to accessories. It used to be that crys

Quite a few of the things that distinguish "high end" radios these days are in terms of user interface, and connections to accessories. It used to be that crystal filters, the ability to select bandwidth, noise suppression, and other dedicated circuits made the radios better. With SDR, if you have sufficient bandwidth, bit depth, and dynamic range, you can do things that were previously $10,000 or more. I was just trying to make the point that the cheapest, entry level, SDR (based on a test mode of the receiver chip) can do stuff that used to be expensive. The fact that a laptop can easily do a gigaflop makes it all possible. Of course there are reasons to spend the money on a good radio. Lower noise figures, better clock stability, internal signal processing and UI. Dedicated knobs for functions are amazingly undervalued in terms of usability. Getting an actually FCC Type approved amateur transceiver, gives good assurance of spur free output, and costs quite a bit to produce.