Gato's AMP-150 integrated amplifier has a function called heat, and Wojciech Pacuła of High Fidelity explains what it is for. A transistor amplifier only reaches its designed level of distortion once it has fully warmed up, which usually takes a couple of hours, and the heat mode gets it there in a fraction of that time. Gato pays the same attention to the parts that drive your speakers. Most powerful amplifiers share that work among rows of output transistors, and Gato argues that no two transistors are ever exactly alike, so their small differences soften the signal. Its TwinFET design uses a single pair of very large transistors instead. Steve Guttenberg calls the AMP-150 "neutral in the best possible sense," and Wayne Garcia of The Absolute Sound found it "neither cool nor dark in timbre." Gato suits listeners who want a clear, uncolored amplifier with plenty of power, in a case they will enjoy looking at.

The AMP-150 AE is the natural place to start. It is an analog integrated with no DAC or streaming, and Guttenberg says it runs safely into very demanding speaker loads. If you want streaming in the same box, look at the DIA integrateds, which use class D output stages. An NPM version adds streaming and works as a Roon endpoint. René van Es of The Ear made the DIA-250S his reference in its price range, crediting "the absence of any class D signature," and Steve Huff found the DIA-400S dead silent and cooler running than most class A or class AB amps. The step up on the analog side is the PWR-222 monoblocks. Allow time for warm-up. Roland Schmenner of Fidelity found the PWR-222 needed about an hour to reach full form. For Gato's own FM-8 speaker, Guttenberg advises an amplifier of at least 100 watts into 4 ohms and a spot 18 inches from the wall.

Gato's founders came out of the Danish high end. Engineer Frederik Johansen and designer Kresten Dinesen met in the mid-1990s at Holfi, a small company known for battery power supplies, cherry wood front panels and handmade speaker drivers. Johansen later headed electronics at GamuT, where he worked with Dinesen again. With engineer Rasmus Holm they started Gato in Herlev, near Copenhagen, to break down what the company calls "the conservative barrier, that only ugly products can produce beautiful sound." According to Guttenberg, the AMP-150 was Gato's first product, arrived in 2010 and has been in production ever since, now as the AMP-150 AE, an anniversary edition. The curved cases, with heatsinks along the sides and top covers in black, white or walnut, became the brand's look, and Garcia found them built "to jewelry-like standards." The FM-50 flagship speaker followed in late 2017, with drivers Gato developed with Scan-Speak, another Danish company. Today Gato makes speakers as well as electronics.