I’ve only had two class A amp, and one was just "strongly biased into class A"
One was a Musical Fidelity A100X integrated. That one I kept only two weeks: it was getting so damn hot after about 30 minutes of use that I was being paranoid all the time. Even the volume control was too hot to touch. You could have grilled a ribeye on top of it. Ridiculous. I had flatmates at the time, and the stupid girl once put her syllabi on top of it, while it was on. I saw that and started to have nightmares about the house burning down.
A couple years later I bought a Sony TA-N86B. That one was amazing and never got too hot to touch even when run in full class A mode. But it did put itself in protection mode every time the room temperature would get to a certain level in summer (and I don’t live in a tropical area!) until the amp’s PSU finally died of probably unrelated causes.
Then I discovered flea power, class D chip amps (that TA2024 from Tripath!) that sounded really lovely (with a little care) on my horns and I definitely gave up on everything else.
Now I have a multi-amped system and exclusively use tiny class D amps. The system sounds great, it stays on 24/7, doesn’t produce any heat, barely uses any electricity, and never sends nasty unwanted continuous current spikes in the fragile and unprotected drivers. They also only use as much floor print as two cigarette packs each.
In Belgium where I live, the energy crisis is an abomination. I have friends earning 2000euro per months, with a 900 euro rent, who now have to pay 500 euro in monthly energy bills. It’s a nightmare. I’m so happy I’ve got my class D amps!