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 | B | Cambridge Audio CXA81 has more power - 80W against 50W into 8 ohms. That is about 2dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Audiolab 6000A MKII the better fit for desk or near-field listening and a small room, and Cambridge Audio CXA81 for a mid-size room, a large room and 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 (75W and 120W). |
| Noise floor | A | Audiolab 6000A MKII is the quieter design on paper - 110dB against 105dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. Cambridge Audio CXA81 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Cambridge Audio CXA81 takes more analogue sources - 5 against 3. |
| Phono stage | depends | Audiolab 6000A MKII has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Cambridge Audio CXA81 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 | A | Only Audiolab 6000A MKII offers a pre-out/main-in loop - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Shelf space | depends | Audiolab 6000A MKII takes up about 17% less shelf area (1328cm² against 1595cm²), and it is 71mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Audiolab 6000A MKII costs less - $1,099 against $1,499 at list. |
A Audiolab 6000A MKII B Cambridge Audio CXA81
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?
Cambridge Audio CXA81 is ahead, but on only 1 of the measured areas, and it costs about 36% more. That is a lot of money for a narrow margin - Audiolab 6000A MKII is the sensible buy unless a specific feature above decides it for you. 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 - Cambridge Audio CXA81 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 50 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 30 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Cambridge Audio CXA81 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If you play records, Audiolab 6000A MKII 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.