No single best amplifier here. What decides it is what you have to drive, what you need to plug in, and how much of the system you want in one box.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 50W against 60W 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 modestly (72W and 90W). |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. Cambridge Audio CXA61 goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Cambridge Audio CXA61 takes more analogue sources - 5 against 4. |
| Phono stage | depends | Rega Brio Mk 7 has a built-in phono stage (MM) and Cambridge Audio CXA61 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. |
| Shelf space | depends | Rega Brio Mk 7 takes up about 51% less shelf area (788cm² against 1595cm²). |
| Price | B | Cambridge Audio CXA61 costs less - $1,099 against $1,195 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Cambridge Audio CXA61 is the cheaper watt - about $18 per watt against $24. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Rega Brio Mk 7 B Cambridge Audio CXA61
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?
Cambridge Audio CXA61 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, Rega Brio Mk 7 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.