so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now coming from an old Kenwood TS-450S that i ran for probably 12 years. figured id share some impressions since i spent way too long reading threads like this before buying.

the waterfall display is the thing everyone talks about and yeah it really does change how you operate, like i actually catch openings now that i wouldve completely missed before because id just be spinning the dial hoping to land on something. the built in ATU handles my end-fed halfwave on most bands without complaint, 40m is a little sketchy sometimes but 20 and 17 are solid.

audio quality on receive is noticeably better than the old Kenwood, though honestly the 450S was no slouch for its age. the touch screen took some getting used to and i still accidentally fat-finger the wrong menu option sometimes. also the RF gain behavior is a bit different than what i was used to, took me a day or two to figure out where i actually wanted to run it.

one thing nobody really mentioned in the reviews i read — the fan kicks on pretty quick when youre running any kind of power and in a quiet shack it's audible. not a dealbreaker just mildly annoying when youre trying to copy weak CW.

anyway curious if anyone else made a similar jump from older gear to the 7300, wondering if the things im noticing are just me adjusting or if others had the same experience

yeah the fan thing drove me nuts at first too. what i ended up doing was dropping the power back to like 50-60 watts for general rag chewing and it stays pretty quiet most of the time. only spins up hard when im doing FT8 duty cycles at higher power which makes sense i guess.

the waterfall really is a game changer coming from older rigs. i came from a TS-570 and honestly going back to it now feels like driving without mirrors. the 7300 isnt perfect — the close-in dynamic range gets some criticism from the serious contesters and theres a reason the IC-7610 exists — but for the money its hard to argue with. youll figure out the RF gain thing pretty quick, i run mine around 2 o'clock most of the time on a typical band with moderate noise.

I made pretty much the exact same move, older Kenwood to the 7300. The ATU thing you mentioned on 40m — are you running the end-fed with a matching unit at the feedpoint or just straight into the radio? I ask because mine was doing something similar and it turned out my 9:1 unun was the culprit not the radio ATU. swapped it out and 40 cleaned right up. might not be your issue but worth checking if you havent already.