These are not the same size of amplifier: Cambridge Audio AXR100 has roughly 2.2x the power of MISSION 778X. That is about 3.5dB, 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 | Cambridge Audio AXR100 has more power - 100W against 45W into 8 ohms. That is about 3.5dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board, but only MISSION 778X handles DSD. |
| Price | B | MISSION 778X costs less - $549 against $699 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Cambridge Audio AXR100 is the cheaper watt - about $7 per watt against $12. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Cambridge Audio AXR100 B MISSION 778X
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?
The usual trade-off: Cambridge Audio AXR100 measures better, MISSION 778X costs about 21% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. 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 AXR100 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 45 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 55 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear.
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.