No single best amplifier here. What decides it is what you have to drive, what you need to plug in, and how much of the system you want in one box.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | A | Anthem MCA 225 Gen 2 has more power - 225W against 130W into 8 ohms. That is about 2.4dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Speaker load rating | A | Anthem MCA 225 Gen 2 is rated down to 2 ohms against 4, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Analogue inputs | evenly matched | The same number of line-level inputs (2). |
| Price | B | Onkyo Icon M-80 costs less - $2,000 against $2,300 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Anthem MCA 225 Gen 2 is the cheaper watt - about $10 per watt against $15. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Anthem MCA 225 Gen 2 B Onkyo Icon M-80
depends neither is better in the abstract - it turns on your room, your system or how you will use them. Only specs published for both amplifiers are judged; anything missing on either side is left out rather than guessed.
Which should you choose?
Anthem MCA 225 Gen 2 leads across most of the measured areas for a fairly modest premium, so it is the easier pick if the budget stretches. Onkyo Icon M-80 is the one to take if it does not. Start with the room. In a large or open-plan room, or with speakers that are hard to drive - low sensitivity, or an impedance that dips - Anthem MCA 225 Gen 2 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 130 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 95 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear.
What a spec sheet cannot show: how either sounds with your speakers, how the controls feel day to day, and what the app is like to live with - which is where most all-in-one amplifiers are actually won or lost. Power figures are the manufacturers' own and are not measured to a common standard, so treat small differences as noise. If you can hear both, that will tell you more than any row above.