Siblings in NAD's Classic range, so they share a design and a house sound. It comes down to power, features and price.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 70W against 80W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | A | NAD C 359S holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output increases strongly to 120W, where the other barely increases. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | A | NAD C 359S is the quieter design on paper - 90dB against 84dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | evenly matched | Both have a DAC on board with much the same capability. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | The same streaming platforms and services on both. |
| Analogue inputs | A | NAD C 359S takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | NAD C 359S 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 | B | Only NAD C 700 offers preamp outputs - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Headphones | depends | Only NAD C 359S has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Amplifier class | depends | NAD C 359S 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 63% less shelf area (651cm² against 1740cm²), and it is 104mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | NAD C 359S costs less - $1,299 against $1,599 at list. |
A NAD C 359S 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?
NAD C 359S is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take NAD C 700 if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. If your speakers are a difficult load - 4 ohms nominal, big woofers, or a sensitivity in the low 80s - NAD C 359S is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. If you play records, NAD C 359S 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.