These are not the same size of amplifier: Rotel A12 MKII has roughly 2x the power of NAD D 3020 V2. That is about 3dB, 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 | Rotel A12 MKII has more power - 60W against 30W into 8 ohms. That is about 3dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate NAD D 3020 V2 the better fit for desk or near-field listening, and Rotel A12 MKII for a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (98dB vs 100dB). |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. Rotel A12 MKII goes higher - 384kHz against 96kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Rotel A12 MKII takes more analogue sources - 4 against 1. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | NAD D 3020 V2 is Class D and Rotel A12 MKII is Class A/B. 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 | NAD D 3020 V2 takes up about 91% less shelf area (146cm² against 1633cm²), and it is 130mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | NAD D 3020 V2 costs less - $499 against $1,100 at list. |
A NAD D 3020 V2 B Rotel A12 MKII
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: Rotel A12 MKII measures better, NAD D 3020 V2 costs about 55% 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 - Rotel A12 MKII has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 30 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 30 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear. Think about the whole system: the roughly $601 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.