Is there such a thing as too much power?

Would you rather have a 500hp car which you do not stress, or a 150hp car which is almost always working at its limit.

Lol! I would rather have a car with superb throttle response.

Awful example. My 1979 Porsche 911SC has only 180 hp and I can assure you it will do 150 mph and is hardly ever working at its limit. Which even if it is, that is what its designed to do! Run flat out! Its just an awful comparison.

I went for a autocross ride one time in a Corvette that had been stripped down, roll-caged, and NASCAR engined to something like 700-800 hp. Who knows maybe 900. Whatever. Instant that car came on the cam both monster fat Hoosier slicks started smoking laying down the biggest fattest burnout stripes you ever saw in your life. The car was all but uncontrollable.

You can never have too much power- if all you want is power. If what you want instead is control, well then its very easy to have too much power. Its all a matter of priorities.

already mentioned above but worth repeating - watts has nothing to do with sound quality.  Class A, A/B, Class D all sound different for a reason.

It depends on a lot of things but probably no.
You don’t state the amps you dealt with so I’m guessing they aren’t from the same manufacturer. Did you go from a class a/b amp to a class a amp? Both SS or both tube?  If you have very efficient speakers, then you might have a better shot at having a low power amp be better compared to having a 85db speaker which would be hard to drive with such low power

MC
Yep... awful comparison (lol)
Nice car though (the Porsche that is). I think the comparison vehicle should be a little better controlled like a later Porsche 911 GT3 RS, or better the 918 Spyder 😁

Roger Modjeski argued that except in the case of very sensitive loudspeakers, all amplifiers are occasionally driven into clipping. He went on to say that how an amp behaves while clipping (stability, generation of distortion) is a result of the quality of it’s design, and that behavior an important contributor to the amp’s sound quality.