honestly, whatever effects board or modeler you like and a decent pair of headphones.
Positive Grid Spark. The best home amp hands down. Any amp or guitar sound you can imagine, it can emulate and there’s a huge community creating free to download patches for it. Plus you can control it through your phone and use it as a recording interface. The make several models, I believe the smallest fits your budget, but save up just a bit more and get the original Spark, it’s a touch cheaper than the Spark 2 and still has amazing sound. Positive Grid
Spark came up as well - does it have a good silent sound? I think from the test videos that was the one that gave a continuous app diving vibe - is that an issue?
I bought the spark 2 4 months ago, my playing has greatly increased because of the turn on and go factor. It has excellent low sound...though it can be somewhat "digital" sometimes.
Ive had one session where i defined 2 or 3 sound that works for me on the app...stored them on the amp and havent fiddled with it since.
The ai accompiment is bullshit and doesnt work. I just choose not to use it.
I have a PositiveGrid Spark mini that I love. It does have an app, but it’s not required at all unless you want to customize effects. You can build 4 presets and they stay forever, even without the app.
The sound, even at low volume, is impressive for the size of the unit.
The Fender Mustang LT25 is a good one. It's small, light, sounds great, and comes with 30 customizable preset tones of all sorts, with 30 empty slots. You can go on the website and and create your own effects chains, and then download them into your amp. I've never found the need for anything else.
The 100 presets from Fender is nice.
Yamaha THR10? I have the THR10C and it works well and in that price range. Can be operated on battery as well.
Other combos I would say a Katana which can be found cheap.
The THR10C is an older version of the 10ii? Do they come with Bluetooth for an alternative aux-in connection, and internal battery?
https://data.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/4/331514/THR_ZV05630_R1_en_web.pdf
There is the manual, but quick answer is yes theee are older versions. No Bluetooth but does have an aux in as well as a headphone jack. No internal battery as it can be powered by a 8 AA batteries.
I've used a spark mini 10 watt for the past couple years and a toneX plug (headphone amp) for around 5 months and for smaller, quieter spaces I much prefer the headphone amp for practice or just playing around solo without a looper.
The spark mini has 4 preset tones your can change between with a dial and replace them with an app, but the app isn't needed for normal use just replacing the preset tones.i usually leave it at a clean, a fuzz, a high gain big overdrive, and a floaty chorus reverb.
The plug headphone amp has like 30 presets with buttons to select from and the app is only used to charge them too so not needed most of the time. It has a half decent tuner built in too.
I think with the larger library of presets to cycle through and being able to go super low on the volume in the headphones without the high gain tones breaking up like they do on a normal amp makes it easy to pick up whenever I'm grabbing my electric guitar which is most days. It holds plenty of charge for me I usually remember to recharge it after maybe every 3 or 4 sessions. My only gripe is as a modeler it doesn't do more synth type non guitar tones, but neither does the spark amp.
How is the sound quality? I tried an ancient Marshall MS-2 (or alike) from the 90s, and that was really horrible, like the cheapest battery-operated radio
I think it's good, most of the default presets I kept too, I only changed 5 or 6 when I got it and left the rest. I'm using sennheiser hd 569 headphones and I can hear a decent range coming through. I think there's a few other similar devices from fender, positive grid, etc I haven't compared, but I can go really low volume and still get good high gain without it breaking up and it was the only device I've used so far that was able to do that reliably.
I have a Boss Dual Cube LX that is my favourite couch rig and has everything I need for practicing at home alone (multiple effects and amps, easy panel controls, looper, AUX in and footswitch controls) and it is loud enough to practice with my bandmates, as long as our drummer plays his electronic kit. More info in my last post
The second best rig I can come up with is a Valeton GP-50 with headphones and/or a small FRFR cab, like a Headrush GO or something similar. The Valeton needs a bit of menu diving but once patches are set it's quick to play, it has a built in rechargeable battery and can easily fit in your gigbag as plan B in case something goes wrong with yoir main gear.
I don't think it's super close to what you asked for, but something like this orange crush makes for an excellent amp to practice on. I really appreciate the built in tuner as well.
Look up some reviews on the model to get a good feel for how it sounds and the capability 👍
I came across that too, but given it's not a modeling amp, doesn't that lock you in a louder volume range?
I don't really know enough to answer specifics on that aspect of it. That being said, when I'm playing on it I feel like I can turn it down as low as I like without any noticeable issues. It has separate knobs for clean and distorted volumes as well which is a nice feature. The same brand also has smaller amps as well that might be worth looking at too.
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