It feels like it's hard to find a "well built" Class D product. A lot of what's on the market seems to have ambitious or vague specs. It makes me suspicious w

It feels like it's hard to find a "well built" Class D product. A lot of what's on the market seems to have ambitious or vague specs. It makes me suspicious when I see those Lepai-style amplifiers that are the size of a CD-ROM drive and claim "30 watts per channel... at 10% distortion." Would it even be able to meet those numbers under the test conditions, used for rating amplifiers in the '70s? I suspect they get much tighter numbers at less ambitious wattages, and honestly, most real world listening isn't going to break 1 watt, but it feels like they're not really starting from a place of credibility. From there, even a competent design seems to usually be sold as half a unit-- typically paired with a laptop-style PSU. I'm sure there's a huge range of quality and suitability of pairing, and it's another ugly cable management game to play. It's not going to fit neatly anywhere designed for traditional-sized components. There are probably some decent all-inclusive units once you move past the $50 AliExpress market, but then you're looking at more complex products and more elaborate competition: the fact it's Class D architecture is one bullet point among things like the number of inputs and outputs, video handling capability, and user experience.