These are not the same size of amplifier: Anthem STR has roughly 5x the power of Naim Uniti Atom. That is about 7dB, 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 | B | Anthem STR has more power - 200W against 40W into 8 ohms. That is about 7dB - a different class of amplifier rather than a bigger version of the same one, and far more than most rooms will ever ask for. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Naim Uniti Atom the better fit for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room, and Anthem STR for a large room and a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Speaker load rating | B | Anthem STR is rated down to 2 ohms against 4, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Naim Uniti Atom goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Streaming | A | Only Naim Uniti Atom has Chromecast and Roon. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Anthem STR takes more analogue sources - 5 against 1. |
| Phono stage | depends | Anthem STR has a built-in phono stage (MM,MC) and Naim Uniti Atom 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 Naim Uniti Atom has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Shelf space | depends | Naim Uniti Atom takes up about 60% less shelf area (781cm² against 1931cm²), and it is 131mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Naim Uniti Atom costs less - $3,799 against $5,000 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Anthem STR is the cheaper watt - about $25 per watt against $95. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Naim Uniti Atom B Anthem STR
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: Anthem STR measures better, Naim Uniti Atom costs about 24% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. 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 - Anthem STR has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 40 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 160 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear - we rate Anthem STR poorly for near-field use for exactly that reason. If you play records, Anthem STR 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.