Different price classes - Naim Uniti Star costs roughly 2.5x what Audiolab Omnia does. Expect it to lead on paper; the question is whether you will hear the difference through the speakers you own.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | B | Naim Uniti Star has more power - 70W against 50W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.5dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Audiolab Omnia the better fit for desk or near-field listening and a small room, and Naim Uniti Star 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. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Audiolab Omnia goes higher - 768kHz against 384kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | Only Audiolab Omnia has DTS Play-Fi; only Naim Uniti Star has AirPlay 2 and Chromecast. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Audiolab Omnia takes more analogue sources - 4 against 1. |
| Phono stage | depends | Audiolab Omnia has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Naim Uniti Star 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 Omnia 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 | Naim Uniti Star takes up about 13% less shelf area (1371cm² against 1582cm²), and it is 42mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Audiolab Omnia costs less - $2,300 against $5,699 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Audiolab Omnia is the cheaper watt - about $46 per watt against $81. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Audiolab Omnia B Naim Uniti Star
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?
Audiolab Omnia is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take Naim Uniti Star if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. If you play records, Audiolab Omnia saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely. Think about the whole system: the roughly $3,399 saved by taking the cheaper one would buy better speakers or a subwoofer, and either does more for the sound than the difference between two competent amplifiers.
What a spec sheet cannot show: how either sounds with your speakers, how the interface feels 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.