These are not the same size of amplifier: NAD C 389 has roughly 2.2x the power of Hegel H95. That is about 3.4dB, 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 | B | NAD C 389 has more power - 130W against 60W into 8 ohms. That is about 3.4dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Hegel H95 the better fit for desk or near-field listening and a small room, and NAD C 389 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 | A | Hegel H95 is the quieter design on paper - 100dB against 95dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. NAD C 389 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | B | NAD C 389 takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | NAD C 389 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. |
| Use with a TV | depends | Only NAD C 389 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 H95 is Class A/B and NAD C 389 is Class D. Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice; Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle. 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 | NAD C 389 is the cheaper watt - about $15 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 NAD C 389
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?
NAD C 389 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 - NAD C 389 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 60 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 70 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate NAD C 389 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If you play records, NAD C 389 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.