These are not the same size of amplifier: Anthem STR has roughly 2x the power of Cambridge Audio Edge A. That is about 3dB, so it is a question of room size and how hard your speakers are to drive, not of one being the better amplifier.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | A | Anthem STR has more power - 200W against 100W into 8 ohms. That is about 3dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Anthem STR the better fit for a very large room, and Cambridge Audio Edge A for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output nearly doubles (400W and 200W). |
| Noise floor | A | Anthem STR is the quieter design on paper - 120dB against 103dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. Cambridge Audio Edge A goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Anthem STR takes more analogue sources - 5 against 3. |
| Phono stage | depends | Anthem STR has a built-in phono stage (MM,MC) and Cambridge Audio Edge A does not. Decisive if you own a turntable, completely irrelevant if you do not - and an outboard phono stage is easy to add later either way. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Cambridge Audio Edge A has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Anthem STR is Class A/B and Cambridge Audio Edge A is Class XA. Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Price | A | Anthem STR costs less - $5,000 against $6,499 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Anthem STR is the cheaper watt - about $25 per watt against $65. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Anthem STR B Cambridge Audio Edge A
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 STR is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take Cambridge Audio Edge A if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. 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 STR has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 100 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 100 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Anthem STR poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If you play records, Anthem STR saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely.
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.