These are not the same size of amplifier: HiFi Rose RS520 has roughly 3.3x the power of Hegel H150. That is about 5.2dB, 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 | HiFi Rose RS520 has more power - 250W against 75W into 8 ohms. That is about 5.2dB - a different class of amplifier rather than a bigger version of the same one, and far more than most rooms will ever ask for. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Hegel H150 the better fit for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room, and HiFi Rose RS520 for a large room and a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Speaker load rating | A | Hegel H150 is rated down to 2 ohms against 4, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Noise floor | B | HiFi Rose RS520 is the quieter design on paper - 109dB against 100dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. HiFi Rose RS520 goes higher - 768kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | Only Hegel H150 has Chromecast. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Hegel H150 takes more analogue sources - 3 against 1. |
| Phono stage | depends | Hegel H150 has a built-in phono stage (MM) and HiFi Rose RS520 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. |
| Use with a TV | depends | Only HiFi Rose RS520 has HDMI eARC, so the television can drive it directly and one remote controls the volume. If the system is for music only, this changes nothing. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Hegel H150 is Class A/B and HiFi Rose RS520 is Class AD. Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Shelf space | depends | HiFi Rose RS520 takes up about 25% less shelf area (1135cm² against 1505cm²), and it is 22mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
| Watts per dollar | B | HiFi Rose RS520 is the cheaper watt - about $15 per watt against $48. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Hegel H150 B HiFi Rose RS520
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?
HiFi Rose RS520 has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is. 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 - HiFi Rose RS520 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 75 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 175 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate HiFi Rose RS520 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If you play records, Hegel H150 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.