These are not the same size of amplifier: Denon Home Amp has roughly 2.2x the power of Denon PMA-600NE. 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 | Denon Home Amp 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 | A | Both decode on board, but only Denon Home Amp handles DSD. |
| Streaming | A | Only Denon Home Amp has AirPlay 2 and HEOS. |
| Phono stage | depends | Denon PMA-600NE has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Denon Home Amp 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 Home Amp is Class D and Denon PMA-600NE 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. |
| Shelf space | depends | Denon Home Amp takes up about 59% less shelf area (580cm² against 1405cm²), and it is 57mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | Denon PMA-600NE costs less - $499 against $899 at list. |
A Denon Home Amp B Denon PMA-600NE
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: Denon Home Amp measures better, Denon PMA-600NE costs about 44% 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 - Denon Home Amp 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. If you play records, Denon PMA-600NE 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.