The matching between amp and speaker is more important than the power ratings, as you noticed. It's just possible that the bigger Proceed was a more refined implementation overall. In a small room, I'd look for a range of amps at whatever price level you consider. You might find that some 50W amp gives you the "right combination".
Here is a real story in that regard, where a 40W amp drove 83dB panels to deeper bass than a 150W amp. The latter was deemed by the owner as barely sufficient for the task...
The main reason I asked about the 200W amp is that it seemed odd to play tiny speakers at such high power levels, but I understand your point now.
The motivation to go down in power is simple: watts are not cheap, like many speaker designers would like you to think... To get more power, the amp designer has to make tougher compromises. Sonic ones, like the obvious need for parallel output devices in sand amps and parallel or large tubes in glassware, none of which can maintain the coherency of a single small amplifying device. Just the physics of the circuit tells you it's impossible to compensate for all mismatched characteristics between many different devices.
At the lower price brackets, perhaps the economy dictates the circuit even... IMO the best sonic bang-for-the-buck comes from the moderate power amp that matches your speakers and not from the high power one - even if it matches too.
This concept makes life a bit more complex, but when you're done with your system component selection you will most likely have the best sound for the budget when going with the "optimal" moderate power amp.
