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 | B | NAD C 389 has more power - 130W against 100W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.1dB, 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 barely increases (100W and 130W). |
| Noise floor | B | NAD C 389 is the quieter design on paper - 95dB against 90dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. NAD C 389 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | A | Only NAD M10 V3 has AirPlay 2, Roon and BluOS. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Headphones | depends | Only NAD C 389 has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Shelf space | depends | NAD M10 V3 takes up about 64% less shelf area (606cm² against 1705cm²), and it is 114mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | NAD C 389 costs less - $1,499 against $2,499 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | NAD C 389 is the cheaper watt - about $12 per watt against $25. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A NAD M10 V3 B NAD C 389
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 389 is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take NAD M10 V3 if one of the "depends" rows above describes your system. Think about the whole system: the roughly $1,000 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.