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 | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 130W against 150W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Arcam SA30 the better fit for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room, and Cambridge Audio Evo 150 for a very large 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 increases strongly (200W and 250W). |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. Cambridge Audio Evo 150 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | The same streaming platforms and services on both. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Arcam SA30 takes more analogue sources - 4 against 2. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Arcam SA30 is Class G and Cambridge Audio Evo 150 is Class D. Class G/H switches its supply rails to cut the heat a Class A/B design wastes; Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Shelf space | depends | Cambridge Audio Evo 150 takes up about 27% less shelf area (1190cm² against 1636cm²). |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
A Arcam SA30 B Cambridge Audio Evo 150
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?
Neither runs away with it - they trade advantages. Let the "depends" rows and the speakers you already own settle it.
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.