Siblings in Naim's Uniti range, so they share a design and a house sound. It comes down to power, features and price.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 150W against 150W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Grip on hard loads | evenly matched | Both behave much the same into 4 ohms - output increases strongly (250W and 260W). |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board, but only Naim Nova PE handles DSD. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | The same streaming platforms and services on both. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Naim Nova PE takes more analogue sources - 2 against 1. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Naim Nova PE has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Shelf space | depends | Naim CI-Uniti 102 takes up about 21% less shelf area (900cm² against 1145cm²), and it is 35mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | B | Naim CI-Uniti 102 costs less - $1,499 against $9,999 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Naim CI-Uniti 102 is the cheaper watt - about $10 per watt against $67. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Naim Nova PE B Naim CI-Uniti 102
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 Nova PE is ahead, but on only 1 of the measured areas, and it costs about 6.7x the price. That is a lot of money for a narrow margin - Naim CI-Uniti 102 is the sensible buy unless a specific feature above decides it for you. Think about the whole system: the roughly $8,500 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.