Much less use them to power $20k speakers?

I have no idea...

Anyhow, in the very odd and perhaps mostly useless category I present to you the sonic impact amp:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/sonicimpact2/t2.html

I figured that everyone here could use a good laugh/guffaw for the day.

I actually picked one of the original T-Amps up earlier this year, since it was only $35 (thinking about a little tiny two-channel rig in the living room for music while reading), but never did anything with it and ended up selling it to someone who uses it as his second zone amp for driving outdoor speakers from his 990. Seeing even the "fancy" T-Amp between those massive Avantgardes does tend to make me want to chuckle a bit.

I think that it was Paul Klipsch that said: " what we need now is a really good 7W amp". With speakers at 104db/w, a 10W amp will be quite enough.

Might be useful for powering electrostatic headphones, like STAX out of zone 2. I use a Crown D40 amp for that, but that's because I have one. If not maybe this would be good. It's certainly small enough.

There is some truth in what jwb474 says - depending on the speakers in question, you may not really need many watts. Klipsch horn speakers are an obvious example of speakers so efficient that they don't need much power. And somewhere out west, former forum regular soundhound is driving a pretty startling large theater full of vintage Altec Lansing speakers with an assortment of 5W and 10W tube amps, with results that are reported to be spectacular. It's still a little amusing to see an amp that sells for $140 between a pair of speakers costing around 150 times as much (no matter how well the little amp fared in the system). Of course, some exotic amp makers may find it less humorous and more unsettling...

Yeah, I also find it amusing that for only twice as much money you can get the Outlaw 200 watt monoblock amp.

The product is just a headscratcher for me.

Seems like it might make a good headphone amp, but I'm not sure that it's suited to that purpose either.

All I can say is don't knock something till you've heard it used properly. Low powered amplifiers, especially ones with tubes, have been around for years and have recently experienced a nice little comeback. It really comes down to what speakers an amplifier is mated with. The relationship between the amp and the speaker is much more important than just the amount of watts the amplifier can output.

One place this item might be used quite well, with sufficient headroom to maintain fine detail (unless you want to damage your hearing), would be as a headphone amp.

The Sonic T-amp is in the category of "Class D" switching amplifiers. Most are fairly low output, but with high efficency speakers (>90dB) will work just fine. The principle of low-power tube amps, as Gonk noted, has been around for a while -- case in point single ended triode (SET) designs.

The Sonic T uses a tripath chip. There is also the ICEPower platform. Though both seem like toys compared to linear designs like those produced by Outlaw, etc., the technology is very promising and has been adopted by high-end companies like Rowland Research, PS Audio, Red Dragon Audio, Bel Canto and NuForce. Unlike the Sonic T, these amps put out as much as 1,000 watts per channel in a chassis that can darn near fit in the palm of your hands, produces virtually no heat, and draws very little AC current. Unlike the Sonic T however, these amps can run upwards of $6,500.

If this kind of geeky thing interests you, buy a copy of the most recent issue of the Absolute Sound. They have a special feature on Class D designs.