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 | A | NAD C 379 has more power - 80W against 50W into 8 ohms. That is about 2dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output barely increases (80W and 50W). |
| Noise floor | B | NAD C 338 is the quieter design on paper - 98dB against 95dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. NAD C 379 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Shelf space | depends | NAD C 338 takes up about 25% less shelf area (1349cm² against 1810cm²), and it is 106mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | NAD C 338 costs less - $799 against $1,099 at list. |
A NAD C 379 B NAD C 338
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 379 is ahead, but on only 1 of the measured areas, and it costs about 38% more. That is a lot of money for a narrow margin - NAD C 338 is the sensible buy unless a specific feature above decides it for you. 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 - NAD C 379 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 50 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 30 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear. Think about the whole system: the roughly $300 saved by taking the cheaper one would buy better speakers or a subwoofer, which does more for the sound than the difference between two competent amplifiers.
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.