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 | NAD C 700 V2 has more power - 80W against 60W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.2dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| 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. |
| Bass control | A | Hegel H95 has the higher damping factor (2000 vs 90), 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 | A | Hegel H95 is the quieter design on paper - 100dB against 84dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. NAD C 700 V2 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Phono stage | depends | NAD C 700 V2 has a built-in phono stage 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 700 V2 has HDMI, 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. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Hegel H95 has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Hegel H95 is Class A/B and NAD C 700 V2 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. |
| Shelf space | depends | NAD C 700 V2 takes up about 57% less shelf area (651cm² against 1505cm²), and it is 54mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
| Watts per dollar | B | NAD C 700 V2 is the cheaper watt - about $25 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 700 V2
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?
Neither runs away with it - they trade advantages. Let the "depends" rows and the speakers you already own settle it. If you play records, NAD C 700 V2 saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely. If this sits under a television, NAD C 700 V2 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.