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 | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 70W against 70W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Naim Uniti Star 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 Star has AirPlay 2, Chromecast and Roon. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Audiolab 7000A takes more analogue sources - 3 against 1. |
| Phono stage | depends | Audiolab 7000A has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Naim Uniti Star 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 | B | Only Audiolab 7000A offers a pre-out/main-in loop - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Built-in sources | depends | Naim Uniti Star has a CD player built in. That is one less box if you still play discs or listen to radio, and dead weight if you do not. |
| Price | B | Audiolab 7000A costs less - $999 against $5,699 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Audiolab 7000A is the cheaper watt - about $14 per watt against $81. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Naim Uniti Star B Audiolab 7000A
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?
Audiolab 7000A has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is. If you play records, Audiolab 7000A saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely. Think about the whole system: the roughly $4,700 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.