These are not the same size of amplifier: Sony STR-DH190 has roughly 4.1x the power of Audioengine N22. That is about 6.1dB, 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 | Sony STR-DH190 has more power - 90W against 22W into 8 ohms. That is about 6.1dB - a different class of amplifier rather than a bigger version of the same one, and far more than most rooms will ever ask for. |
| Phono stage | depends | Sony STR-DH190 has a built-in phono stage 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 | A | Only Audioengine N22 offers preamp outputs - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Shelf space | depends | Audioengine N22 takes up about 84% less shelf area (202cm² against 1299cm²), and it is 108mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Audioengine N22 costs less - $199 against $248 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Sony STR-DH190 is the cheaper watt - about $3 per watt against $9. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Audioengine N22 B Sony STR-DH190
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: Sony STR-DH190 measures better, Audioengine N22 costs about 20% 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 - Sony STR-DH190 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 68 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear. If you play records, Sony STR-DH190 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.