These are not the same size of amplifier: Sony STR-DH190 has roughly 3.6x the power of Cambridge Audio AXA25. That is about 5.6dB, 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 | A | Sony STR-DH190 has more power - 90W against 25W into 8 ohms. That is about 5.6dB - a different class of amplifier rather than a bigger version of the same one, and far more than most rooms will ever ask for. |
| Phono stage | depends | Sony STR-DH190 has a built-in phono stage and Cambridge Audio AXA25 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. |
| Price | A | Sony STR-DH190 costs less - $248 against $299 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Sony STR-DH190 is the cheaper watt - about $3 per watt against $12. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Sony STR-DH190 B Cambridge Audio AXA25
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-DH190 is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take Cambridge Audio AXA25 if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. 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 - Sony STR-DH190 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 25 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 65 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear. If you play records, Sony STR-DH190 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.