These are not the same size of amplifier: Hegel H600 has roughly 5.5x the power of Yamaha WXA-70A. That is about 7.4dB, 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 | A | Hegel H600 has more power - 303W against 55W into 8 ohms. That is about 7.4dB - 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 H600 the better fit for a large room and a very large room, and Yamaha WXA-70A 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 H600 is rated down to 2 ohms against 4, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board, but only Hegel H600 handles MQA. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | The same streaming platforms and services on both. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Hegel H600 takes more analogue sources - 4 against 1. |
| Use with a TV | depends | Only Yamaha WXA-70A has HDMI eARC/ARC, 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. |
| Shelf space | depends | Yamaha WXA-70A takes up about 69% less shelf area (587cm² against 1914cm²), and it is 178mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | Yamaha WXA-70A costs less - $1,300 against $13,800 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Yamaha WXA-70A is the cheaper watt - about $24 per watt against $46. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Hegel H600 B Yamaha WXA-70A
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: Hegel H600 measures better, Yamaha WXA-70A costs about 91% 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 - Hegel H600 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 55 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 248 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Hegel H600 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If this sits under a television, Yamaha WXA-70A is the one to buy - HDMI ARC means the TV remote controls the volume and there is no second box in the way.
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.