One is a streaming all-in-one and the other is an amplifier. Judge them on how many boxes you want and what you already own, not on the spec sheet alone.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 75W against 80W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | A | LEAK Stereo 230 holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output increases strongly to 115W, where the other barely increases. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | A | LEAK Stereo 230 is the quieter design on paper - 109dB against 84dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. LEAK Stereo 230 goes higher - 768kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | B | Only NAD C 700 has AirPlay 2, Roon and BluOS. |
| Analogue inputs | evenly matched | The same number of line-level inputs (2). |
| Phono stage | depends | LEAK Stereo 230 has a built-in phono stage (MM) and NAD C 700 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. |
| Headphones | depends | Only LEAK Stereo 230 has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Amplifier class | depends | LEAK Stereo 230 is Class A/B and NAD C 700 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 700 takes up about 55% less shelf area (651cm² against 1454cm²), and it is 146mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | NAD C 700 costs less - $1,599 against $1,695 at list. |
A LEAK Stereo 230 B NAD C 700
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: LEAK Stereo 230 measures better, NAD C 700 costs about 6% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. If your speakers are a difficult load - 4 ohms nominal, big woofers, or a sensitivity in the low 80s - LEAK Stereo 230 is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. If you play records, LEAK Stereo 230 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.