These are not the same size of amplifier: Rotel A12 MKII has roughly 2.7x the power of Audioengine N22. That is about 4.4dB, so it is a question of room size and how hard your speakers are to drive, not of one being the better amplifier.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | B | Rotel A12 MKII has more power - 60W against 22W into 8 ohms. That is about 4.4dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Audioengine N22 the better fit for desk or near-field listening, and Rotel A12 MKII for a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Noise floor | B | Rotel A12 MKII is the quieter design on paper - 100dB against 95dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Rotel A12 MKII has a DAC on board; the other needs an external one, which is another box, another power lead and another purchase. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Rotel A12 MKII takes more analogue sources - 4 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | Rotel A12 MKII has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Audioengine N22 does not. Decisive if you own a turntable, completely irrelevant if you do not - and an outboard phono stage is easy to add later either way. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Shelf space | depends | Audioengine N22 takes up about 88% less shelf area (202cm² against 1633cm²), and it is 184mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Audioengine N22 costs less - $199 against $1,100 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Audioengine N22 is the cheaper watt - about $9 per watt against $18. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Audioengine N22 B Rotel A12 MKII
depends neither is better in the abstract - it turns on your room, your system or how you will use them. Only specs published for both amplifiers are judged; anything missing on either side is left out rather than guessed.
Which should you choose?
The usual trade-off: Rotel A12 MKII measures better, Audioengine N22 costs about 82% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. Start with the room. In a large or open-plan room, or with speakers that are hard to drive - low sensitivity, or an impedance that dips - Rotel A12 MKII has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 22 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 38 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear. If you play records, Rotel A12 MKII saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely.
What a spec sheet cannot show: how either sounds with your speakers, how the controls feel day to day, and what the app is like to live with - which is where most all-in-one amplifiers are actually won or lost. Power figures are the manufacturers' own and are not measured to a common standard, so treat small differences as noise. If you can hear both, that will tell you more than any row above.