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 | A | NAD C 368 has more power - 80W against 60W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.2dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate NAD C 368 the better fit for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room, and Marantz PM7000N for desk or near-field listening and a small room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Grip on hard loads | B | Marantz PM7000N holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output increases modestly to 80W, where the other barely increases. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | B | Marantz PM7000N is the quieter design on paper - 115dB against 98dB. 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 | B | Only Marantz PM7000N has AirPlay 2, Roon and HEOS. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Marantz PM7000N takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Amplifier class | depends | NAD C 368 is Class D and Marantz PM7000N is Class A/B. Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle; 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. |
| Price | A | NAD C 368 costs less - $1,199 against $1,299 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | NAD C 368 is the cheaper watt - about $15 per watt against $22. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A NAD C 368 B Marantz PM7000N
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: Marantz PM7000N measures better, NAD C 368 costs about 8% 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 - Marantz PM7000N is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating.
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.