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 | B | Naim CI-Uniti 102 has more power - 150W against 80W into 8 ohms. That is about 2.7dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Naim Uniti Nova the better fit for desk or near-field listening, a small room and a mid-size room, and Naim CI-Uniti 102 for a large room and a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board, but only Naim Uniti Nova handles DSD. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | The same streaming platforms and services on both. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Naim Uniti Nova takes more analogue sources - 2 against 1. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Naim Uniti Nova has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Naim Uniti Nova is Class A/B and Naim CI-Uniti 102 is Class D. Class A/B runs warm and is the long-established mainstream choice; Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Shelf space | depends | Naim CI-Uniti 102 takes up about 34% less shelf area (900cm² against 1371cm²). |
| Price | B | Naim CI-Uniti 102 costs less - $1,499 against $6,899 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Naim CI-Uniti 102 is the cheaper watt - about $10 per watt against $86. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Naim Uniti Nova 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?
Neither runs away with it - they trade advantages. Let the "depends" rows and the speakers you already own settle it. 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, 80 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 70 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. Think about the whole system: the roughly $5,400 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.