The best desktop amps for portability and uncompromising sound quality
Using a combo amp for practice at home is like bringing a paving slab to a pillow fight. For fewer ruffled feathers in your vicinity, you’d be better off using a desktop amp. This relatively new category of amplifiers can give you excellent sound while keeping the volume respectful(-ish), and many of them offer a wide range of digital amp models and effects to help you find your sonic sweet spots.
Desktop amps are usually even smaller than a classic practice amp, with neat enough proportions to live on your desk. You can even carry one along to a jam session, where many models will run cordlessly after a thorough charge-up.
But what really sets the best desktop amps apart is their on-board smarts. Driven futurewards by innovations from the likes of Positive Grid and JBL, cutting-edge models fold in capabilities to help with practising, recording and writing music with your guitar at home. With the right desktop amp, you can tap into AI-powered backing tracks, tuners, metronomes, smartphone operability and Bluetooth connectivity, all from a little box on your desk. Equally, there are simpler desktop amps from the likes of Boss, Orange and Earthquaker Devices that prioritise excellent sound in a neat package.
Headphone amps – another sub-category of practice amps – offer similar advantages to a desktop amp, so we’ve included a few of these supremely portable and neighbour-friendly amplifiers among the potted reviews below.
At a glance:
Our pick: Positive Grid Spark Mini
Best for automated accompaniment: JBL Bandbox Solo
Best affordable desktop amp: Boss Katana-Mini X
Best pocket-sized amplifier: Fender Mustang Micro Plus
Best analogue headphone amp: EarthQuaker Devices Easy Listening
Best budget desktop amp: Orange Crush Mini
Best all-in-one headphones: Positive Grid Spark Neo
Best premium desktop amp: Yamaha THR10II
Best FRFR desktop amp: HeadRush FRFR GO
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Our pick: Positive Grid Spark Mini
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A truly portable desktop amp, the Positive Grid Spark Mini has a pint-sized form that’ll comfortably find a spot on your workstation, or even inside a backpack. It’s louder than it looks, with a 10-Watt pair of 2-inch drivers behind the grill, and a base-integrated passive radiator which enlists the surface beneath it as a bassy sounding board.
There’s masses to love about this miniature amp: excellent adjustability via the minimal on-unit controls, practice-friendly features including Bluetooth pairing and ‘Smart Jam’ backing tracks, outstanding app operability and – most importantly – stunning sound quality across 30 amp type presets. We believe it’s one of the best practice amps ever made.
Need more? Read our Positive Grid Spark Mini review and our review of the Steve Vai variant.
Best for automated accompaniment: JBL Bandbox Solo
Credit: JBL
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Trust a smart speaker brand to create one of the cleverest practice amps on the planet. You might still be peeking at it mistrustfully from behind your Vox AC30, but the JBL BandBox Solo is a potential game-changer for solo practice sessions and desktop creativity.
It has the sort of smarts we’ve come to expect from a feature-packed desktop amp, including a good range of presets for guitar (as well as for vocals and bass guitar), adjustable on-board effects, looper, drum machine, tuner and metronome – but what’s really revolutionary about the BandBox Solo is its play-along possibilities. Connect your chosen audio via Bluetooth, and you can use the amp’s ‘Stem AI’ processor to remove the guitar, vocals or other instruments from the mix, creating a custom backing track. If you have songs to learn, this amp is uniquely equipped to help you do it.
Best affordable desktop amp: Boss Katana-Mini X
Boss Katana-Mini X. Image: Press
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If you like the form factor and impressive sound quality of the best desktop amps, but not so much the app-heavy user experience or the pricing, then this one’s for you. Loud, versatile and affordable, the Boss Katana-Mini X is more of a ‘familiar’ guitar amp than many of the others featured here (though it does double up as a Bluetooth speaker, which can’t hurt).
Our reviewer was impressed with the Katana-Mini X’s clear tones, ample tweakability, generous selection of on-board effects, and its power, which proved a match for busking or a campfire singalong. It’s genuinely portable, too, with a carry strap and up to ten hours’ runtime on a single USB charge.
Need more? Read our Boss Katana-Mini X review.
Best pocket-sized amplifier: Fender Mustang Micro Plus
Delay Level on the Micro Plus. Image: Adam Gasson
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This tinier-than-pocket-sized headphone amp is the height of portability, cramming a great selection of sounds (25 amp models and 25 effects!) into the smallest ever Fender amplifier. Keep one inside your guitar case, combine with some decent headphones, and you can enjoy excellent amplified sound wherever you may be. It allows easy control via the dial and display, or finer adjustment via the Fender Tone app.
We were blown away by the sounds on offer here, from classic tweed and black-panel tones to oddities including Super Sonic and Excelsior amp models. The effects include some superb Fender pedal emulations, and you can combine these with your favourite amp sounds to create your very own presets.
Need more? Read our Fender Mustang Micro Plus review.
Best analogue headphone amp: EarthQuaker Devices Easy Listening
Image: Press
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An ultra-simple amp simulator with tone based on the Fender Deluxe Reverb, the EarthQuaker Devices Easy Listening is ideal for guitarists who like their desktop amps simple and sweet-sounding. Don’t expect bells and whistles; do expect excellent tone.
Like the Fender Mustang Micro Plus, this is a headphone amp – so you’ll need to plug in some decent cans to experience the Easy Listening at its best. The reward for making this small effort is clear, clean, tonally balanced sound, right up and down the pedal’s single adjustable parameter: volume. The Easy Listening won’t give you a full amp experience, let alone the bells and whistles some desktop amps offer – but it’s a great little option to have kicking about.
Need more? Read our EarthQuaker Devices Easy Listening review.
Best budget desktop amp: Orange Crush Mini
Mmmmmm, Orange Crush. This distinctively-hued line of amplifiers is famed for its warm tone and juicy amp overdrive – and the Orange Crush Mini gives you a taste of that sweet signature sound in a concentrated, 3W format.
Eschewing the connected features you’d get from the likes of Positive Grid and Blackstar, this is a straightforward mini practice amp with standout on-board drive. There are some handy extras including an aux input and a built-in tuner, but you’ll spend most of your time playing with the shape, gain and volume controls on the top panel, creating sounds that punch above this amp’s negligible weight.
Need more? Read our Orange Crush Mini review.
Best all-in-one headphones: Positive Grid Spark Neo
Image: Press
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A headphone amp in the truest sense, the Spark NEO magicks Positive Grid’s sounds and smarts into a pair of wireless over-ear headphones – with far better results than we ever heard from forerunners like the Vox AmPhones.
These cans connect to the peerless Spark app, which gives you access to 33 amps, 43 effects, and over 100,000 community-made presets in the ToneCloud user library. (Side note: it’s also abnormally straightforward to set up.) Plug the supplied dongle into your guitar, pair up the headphones and you’ll be rewarded with midrange punch, clear high-end and thumping bass response, in myriad tonal flavours to suit your taste.
Need more? Read our Positive Grid Spark Neo review.
Best premium desktop amp: Yamaha THR10II
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Yamaha is widely considered to have pioneered the desktop amplifier category with its THR5 and THR10 models, both of which launched in 2011.
This newer installment, the THR10II, carries the same industrial-chic design DNA as those early models but adds new musical possibilities, with an expanded selection of digital amp models, Bluetooth playback for easier play-along practice, and plug-in-and-play recording via USB.
With two speakers pushing out a combined 20W, this is a beast compared to the average desktop amp. It’s dreamily easy to use at home, offering the rare advantage of wireless connectivity to your effects chain via a Line 6 G10TII transmitter (sold separately). Admittedly, you pay a premium for these little luxuries.
Need more? Read our Yamaha THR10II review.
Best FRFR desktop amp: HeadRush FRFR GO
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For real, for real, the only trouble with amp pedals – like the EarthQuaker Devices model featured above – is that you can’t hear them out loud. Here’s where an FRFR (flat frequency, flat response) amp comes in. These workhorses push out an unvarnished guitar sound, so you can hear the tone of your chosen amp modeller as the maker intended it.
This HeadRush model is a great desktop example, with good sound, excellent cordless runtime and approachable pricing. Modestly sized and equipped with Bluetooth connectivity and basic EQ controls, it’s the perfect solution for hearing or rejigging your digital modelling setup at home or in the studio.
Need more? Read our HeadRush FRFR GO review.
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