Different price classes - JBL MA710 costs roughly 1.8x what Sony STR-DH590 does. Expect it to lead on paper; the question is whether you will hear the difference through the speakers you own.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 110W against 90W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Speaker load rating | A | JBL MA710 is rated down to 4 ohms against 6, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Sony STR-DH590 takes more analogue sources - 4 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | JBL MA710 has a built-in phono stage and Sony STR-DH590 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. |
| Built-in sources | depends | Sony STR-DH590 has a radio tuner built in. That is one less box if you still play discs or listen to radio, and dead weight if you do not. |
| Amplifier class | depends | JBL MA710 is D and Sony STR-DH590 is AB. Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle; Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Shelf space | depends | Sony STR-DH590 takes up about 21% less shelf area (1318cm² against 1672cm²), and it is 80mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | Sony STR-DH590 costs less - $498 against $880 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Sony STR-DH590 is the cheaper watt - about $6 per watt against $8. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A JBL MA710 B Sony STR-DH590
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?
Sony STR-DH590 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 MA710 saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely. Think about the whole system: the roughly $382 saved by taking the cheaper one would buy better speakers or a subwoofer, which does more for the sound than the difference between two competent amplifiers.
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.