Siblings in Denon's PMA range, so they share a design and a house sound. It comes down to power, features and price.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 80W against 70W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output nearly doubles (160W and 140W). |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (110dB vs 108dB). |
| Built-in DAC | evenly matched | Both have a DAC on board with much the same capability. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Denon AE PMA-A110 takes more analogue sources - 4 against 3. |
| Room to grow | A | Only Denon AE PMA-A110 offers preamp outputs - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Price | B | Denon PMA-1600NE costs less - $2,099 against $3,999 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Denon PMA-1600NE is the cheaper watt - about $30 per watt against $50. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Denon AE PMA-A110 B Denon PMA-1600NE
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 AE PMA-A110 is ahead, but on only 1 of the measured areas, and it costs about 91% more. That is a lot of money for a narrow margin - Denon PMA-1600NE is the sensible buy unless a specific feature above decides it for you. Think about the whole system: the roughly $1,900 saved by taking the cheaper one would buy better speakers or a subwoofer, which 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 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.