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 | B | NAD C 3050 has more power - 100W against 70W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.5dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Grip on hard loads | A | Denon PMA-1600NE holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output nearly doubles to 140W, where the other barely increases. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | A | Denon PMA-1600NE is the quieter design on paper - 108dB against 95dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board, but only Denon PMA-1600NE handles DSD. |
| Room to grow | B | Only NAD C 3050 offers preamp outputs and a pre-out/main-in loop - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Denon PMA-1600NE is Class A/B and NAD C 3050 is Class D. Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice; Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Shelf space | depends | NAD C 3050 takes up about 16% less shelf area (1633cm² against 1949cm²), and it is 85mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | NAD C 3050 costs less - $1,899 against $2,099 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | NAD C 3050 is the cheaper watt - about $19 per watt against $30. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Denon PMA-1600NE B NAD C 3050
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?
Neither runs away with it - they trade advantages. Let the "depends" rows and the speakers you already own settle it. If your speakers are a difficult load - 4 ohms nominal, big woofers, or a sensitivity in the low 80s - Denon PMA-1600NE is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating.
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.