These are not the same size of amplifier: Naim CI-Uniti 102 has roughly 2x the power of LEAK Stereo 230. 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 | Naim CI-Uniti 102 has more power - 150W against 75W into 8 ohms. That is about 3dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Naim CI-Uniti 102 the better fit for a large room and a very large room, and LEAK Stereo 230 for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Grip on hard loads | A | Naim CI-Uniti 102 holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output increases strongly to 260W, where the other increases strongly. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | evenly matched | Much the same signal-to-noise ratio (110dB vs 109dB). |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. LEAK Stereo 230 goes higher - 768kHz against 384kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | A | Only Naim CI-Uniti 102 has AirPlay 2 and Chromecast. |
| Analogue inputs | B | LEAK Stereo 230 takes more analogue sources - 2 against 1. |
| Phono stage | depends | LEAK Stereo 230 has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Naim CI-Uniti 102 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 | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Headphones | depends | Only LEAK Stereo 230 has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Naim CI-Uniti 102 is Class D and LEAK Stereo 230 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. |
| Shelf space | depends | Naim CI-Uniti 102 takes up about 38% less shelf area (900cm² against 1454cm²), and it is 142mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Naim CI-Uniti 102 costs less - $1,499 against $1,695 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Naim CI-Uniti 102 is the cheaper watt - about $10 per watt against $23. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Naim CI-Uniti 102 B LEAK Stereo 230
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?
Naim CI-Uniti 102 is the easier recommendation: it leads on most of the measured areas and costs less. Take LEAK Stereo 230 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 - Naim CI-Uniti 102 is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. 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 - Naim CI-Uniti 102 has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 75 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 75 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Naim CI-Uniti 102 poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason.
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.