These are not the same size of amplifier: McIntosh MAC7200 has roughly 2x the power of Accuphase E-3000. That is about 3dB, 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 | McIntosh MAC7200 has more power - 200W against 100W into 8 ohms. That is about 3dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Built-in DAC | A | McIntosh MAC7200 has a DAC on board; the other needs an external one, which is another box, another power lead and another purchase. |
| Phono stage | depends | McIntosh MAC7200 has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Accuphase E-3000 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. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
| Watts per dollar | A | McIntosh MAC7200 is the cheaper watt - about $48 per watt against $95. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A McIntosh MAC7200 B Accuphase E-3000
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?
McIntosh MAC7200 has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is. 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 - McIntosh MAC7200 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 100 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 100 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear. If you play records, McIntosh MAC7200 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.