The R8600 is an outstanding receiver, no two ways about it. I have owned mine since release day, and am extremely pleased with it. And, in my opinion, the R8600 is the best candidate for “having only one RX and doing it all”, but is that really such a good option?
I find that I always want more than one radio running. For dedicated scanning I use the Uniden BCD536HP and just let it do its thing. For HF I use multiple SDRs, often because I am looking at multiple chunks of spectrum at any one time.
I guess I could talk myself into, if required to downsize for space, keeping only the 536 and the R8600. But it would take some convincing, I like my WinRadio G31 and G3DDC a whole lot, and my RFSpace NetSDR is my “go to” tool, the other HF SDRs here are mostly redundancy for monitoring many things at once. I know this is the opposite of what you asked, but if there was a better computer tool to use the R8600 (not that HDSDR is bad, it is just not as clean as some others) I might be more satisfied with only the R8600 and the 536 combo. I find it less comfortable today to use the front panel controls of a radio, despite having grown up with (and still owning a couple hundred) tube type boatanchors. And without a large, high detail, waterfall I feel like something is missing today. I have been using waterfalls since the early 1980's, and at home for more than 10 years, I feel almost like I have forgotten my glasses, or something, working with a radio with no waterfall today.
The Icom R8600 has no numerical keyboard.
Is there a roundabout to enter frequency direct ?
Direct frequency input is easy on the R8600. You simply touch the frequency display on the touch screen, a number pad pops up on the screen, and you type in the frequency you want and touch the ENT soft button.
So while there is not a hardware numerical keyboard, there is a soft numerical keyboard on the display.
T!