Siblings in Emotiva's BasX range, so they share a design and a house sound. It comes down to power, features and price.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | A | Emotiva BasX A1 has more power - 200W against 160W into 8 ohms. That is about 1dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output increases strongly (325W and 250W). |
| Bass control | evenly matched | Similar damping factor (500 vs 500). |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (112dB vs 112dB). |
| Analogue inputs | evenly matched | The same number of line-level inputs (2). |
| Price | A | Emotiva BasX A1 costs less - $569 against $799 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Emotiva BasX A1 is the cheaper watt - about $3 per watt against $5. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Emotiva BasX A1 B Emotiva BasX A2+
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?
Emotiva BasX A1 is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take Emotiva BasX A2+ if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. Think about the whole system: the roughly $230 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.