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 | A | Denon AVR-A1H has more power - 150W against 120W into 8 ohms. That is about 1dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Speaker load rating | A | Denon AVR-A1H is rated down to 4 ohms against 8, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Analogue inputs | B | ARCAM AVR31 takes more analogue sources - 6 against 5. |
| Phono stage | depends | Denon AVR-A1H has a built-in phono stage and ARCAM AVR31 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 | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Denon AVR-A1H is AB and ARCAM AVR31 is G. Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice; Class G/H switches its supply rails to cut the heat a Class A/B design wastes. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
A Denon AVR-A1H B ARCAM AVR31
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?
Denon AVR-A1H has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is. If you play records, Denon AVR-A1H 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.