Anyone with one of these devices care to share their experiences? I've been looking for a way to get into SDR and DSP, but not sure if purchasing a HackRF would be a good first step considering its price tag ($300) and relative newness.

If you're looking for a good cheap kit to start out with, I suggest a cheap DVB-T card with a Realtek RTL2832U chip.

20 MHz - 2.2 GHz ~2.5 MS/s

Just google for RTLSDR.

You can get started for as little as 15-20 USD.

I second this, one of the links to a site selling the HackRF also sells a USB dongle. He explains in the first video that you will be able to do some of the lessons with this cheaper hardware. The welcome lesson about FM can definitely be done with a cheapo dongle.

http://hackerwarehouse.com/product/dvb-t-usb2-0/

I definitely agree with packetlss. The ~$20 dongles are way too much fun. They aren't very noiseless or precise, but it doesn't matter given all you can do with one.

I have many of them, and I also have a HackRF. HackRF additionally transmits, which can be cool, and is my first transmit capable SDR. Previously I did build an SDR, an incredibly simple circuit called the Zeta SDR, and then hooked it into a sound card. I've also played around with digital RF synths, but they are not the same, although that is my first experience with transmission, and also the Raspberry PI simple FM transmitter (and I do have my Amateur Radio license, which is often a requirement to transmit at any appreciable power like for outside of a room).

I really like the HackRF so far. It works great on my Chromebook, and playing with the GNU Radio companion is really fun. I'm looking forward to the continuing video series the HackRF creator is making.

I know of at least one person who has a more expensive device, the Perseus SDR. They use it for receiving week signals on the shortwave radio bands.

Edit: checkout the subreddit for the dongles http://www.reddit.com/r/rtlsdr

Just curious, which Chromebook do you use and have you experimented with the maximum sample rate it can handle?

So I have the 2gb c720. I just shut most everything down except for a couple of terminal windows that didn't look like they had anything going on. I am on Gnome Shell on 14.04, and with the compositing perhaps this makes this crappier. I also had the device in the USB 3 port.

I was able to get 6 megs a sec with GQRX. 7 had occasional but reasonable stuttering. It is possible that without the compositing this would be better, and also I would think a GRC graph without any UI updating (or even without X) may perform even better.

You can find here an initial review of this board: http://www.rtl-sdr.com/hackrf-initial-review/

The RTL dongles really benefit from a better aerial.

The SkyScanner mobile Scanner aerial is pretty cheap and its effective over the range of frequencies the RTL can tune to.