These are not the same size of amplifier: Hegel H30A has roughly 7.3x the power of Hegel H190v. That is about 8.7dB, 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 | A | Hegel H30A has more power - 1100W against 150W into 8 ohms. That is about 8.7dB - 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 H30A the better fit for a very large room, and Hegel H190v for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Speaker load rating | A | Hegel H30A is rated down to 1 ohms against 2, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Bass control | B | Hegel H190v has the higher damping factor (4000 vs 500), 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 | B | 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 | B | Hegel H190v takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | Hegel H190v has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Hegel H30A 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. |
| Shelf space | depends | Hegel H190v takes up about 29% less shelf area (1763cm² against 2473cm²), and it is 165mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | Hegel H190v costs less - $3,200 against $20,000 at list. |
A Hegel H30A B Hegel H190v
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 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 - Hegel H30A has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 150 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 950 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Hegel H30A poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If you play records, Hegel H190v 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.