These are not the same size of amplifier: Cambridge Audio Evo 300 has roughly 5x the power of Cambridge Audio CXA61. That is about 7dB, 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 Evo 300 has more power - 300W against 60W into 8 ohms. That is about 7dB - a different class of amplifier rather than a bigger version of the same one, and far more than most rooms will ever ask for. |
| Grip on hard loads | A | Cambridge Audio Evo 300 holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output nearly doubles to 550W, where the other increases strongly. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Cambridge Audio Evo 300 goes higher - 768kHz against 384kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | A | Only Cambridge Audio Evo 300 has AirPlay 2, Chromecast and Roon. |
| Phono stage | depends | Cambridge Audio Evo 300 has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Cambridge Audio CXA61 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. |
| Use with a TV | depends | Only Cambridge Audio Evo 300 has HDMI eARC, so the television can drive it directly and one remote controls the volume. If the system is for music only, this changes nothing. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Cambridge Audio Evo 300 is Class D and Cambridge Audio CXA61 is Class A/B. Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle; Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Price | B | Cambridge Audio CXA61 costs less - $1,099 against $3,999 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Cambridge Audio Evo 300 is the cheaper watt - about $13 per watt against $18. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Cambridge Audio Evo 300 B Cambridge Audio CXA61
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 Evo 300 measures better, Cambridge Audio CXA61 costs about 73% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. If your speakers are a difficult load - 4 ohms nominal, big woofers, or a sensitivity in the low 80s - Cambridge Audio Evo 300 is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. 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 Evo 300 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 60 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 240 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.