Siblings in Arcam's SA range, so they share a design and a house sound. It comes down to power, features and price.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 120W against 130W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output increases strongly (200W and 200W). |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (110dB vs 112dB). |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Arcam SA35 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. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Arcam SA30 has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
A Arcam SA35 B Arcam SA30
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?
Arcam SA35 has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is.
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.