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 | A | Mark Levinson No.5802 has more power - 125W against 100W 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 nearly doubles (250W and 200W). |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (103dB vs 103dB). |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board, but only Mark Levinson No.5802 handles MQA. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Mark Levinson No.5802 is Class A/B and Cambridge Audio Edge A is Class XA. 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 | Cambridge Audio Edge A takes up about 24% less shelf area (1867cm² against 2454cm²), and it is 154mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | Cambridge Audio Edge A costs less - $6,499 against $8,500 at list. |
A Mark Levinson No.5802 B Cambridge Audio Edge A
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: Mark Levinson No.5802 measures better, Cambridge Audio Edge A costs about 24% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here.
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.