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 - 60W against 50W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Noise floor | B | Arcam A5 is the quieter design on paper - 106dB against 100dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Both decode on board. Rotel A12 MKII goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Rotel A12 MKII takes more analogue sources - 4 against 3. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Price | B | Arcam A5 costs less - $699 against $1,100 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | B | Arcam A5 is the cheaper watt - about $14 per watt against $18. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Rotel A12 MKII B Arcam A5
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. Think about the whole system: the roughly $401 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.