Siblings in Hegel's H range, so they share a design and a house sound. It comes down to power, features and price.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | B | Hegel H20 has more power - 200W against 150W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.2dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Hegel H190v the better fit for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room, and Hegel H20 for a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Bass control | A | Hegel H190v has the higher damping factor (4000 vs 1000), which usually means a tighter grip on a woofer. Above about 100 the returns flatten out, so read this as a tendency rather than a ranking. |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (100dB vs 100dB). |
| Built-in DAC | A | Hegel H190v has a DAC on board; the other needs an external one, which is another box, another power lead and another purchase. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Hegel H190v takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | Hegel H190v has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Hegel H20 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. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Hegel H190v has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Price | A | Hegel H190v costs less - $3,200 against $7,200 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Hegel H190v is the cheaper watt - about $21 per watt against $36. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Hegel H190v B Hegel H20
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?
Hegel H190v is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take Hegel H20 if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. If you play records, Hegel H190v saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely. If you already own a DAC or a streamer, the built-in one is money you are paying twice for, and Hegel H20 becomes the more rational buy.
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.