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 - 70W against 80W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Built-in DAC | evenly matched | Both have a DAC on board with much the same capability. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | The same streaming platforms and services on both. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Naim Uniti Nova takes more analogue sources - 2 against 1. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| 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 | A | Naim Uniti Star costs less - $5,699 against $6,899 at list. |
A Naim Uniti Star B Naim Uniti Nova
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: Naim Uniti Nova measures better, Naim Uniti Star costs about 17% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here.
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.