No single best amplifier here. What decides it is what you have to drive, what you need to plug in, and how much of the system you want in one box.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | B | JBL SA550 C has more power - 90W against 60W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.8dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Hegel H95 the better fit for desk or near-field listening and a small room, and JBL SA550 C for a mid-size room, 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 H95 is rated down to 2 ohms against 4, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Noise floor | B | JBL SA550 C is the quieter design on paper - 106dB against 100dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | evenly matched | Both have a DAC on board with much the same capability. |
| Analogue inputs | B | JBL SA550 C takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | JBL SA550 C has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Hegel H95 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 | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Hegel H95 is Class A/B and JBL SA550 C is Class G. Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice; Class G/H switches its supply rails to cut the heat a Class A/B design wastes. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
| Watts per dollar | B | JBL SA550 C is the cheaper watt - about $22 per watt against $33. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Hegel H95 B JBL SA550 C
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?
JBL SA550 C has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is. If you play records, JBL SA550 C 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.