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 | B | JBL MA9100HP has more power - 140W against 100W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.5dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Speaker load rating | B | JBL MA9100HP is rated down to 4 ohms against 6, so it is the safer partner for a low-impedance speaker. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Sony STR-AN1000 takes more analogue sources - 3 against 2. |
| Phono stage | depends | JBL MA9100HP has a built-in phono stage and Sony STR-AN1000 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 | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Built-in sources | depends | Sony STR-AN1000 has a radio tuner built in. That is one less box if you still play discs or listen to radio, and dead weight if you do not. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Sony STR-AN1000 is AB and JBL MA9100HP is 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 | Sony STR-AN1000 takes up about 19% less shelf area (1482cm² against 1837cm²), and it is 80mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | A | Sony STR-AN1000 costs less - $1,148 against $1,760 at list. |
A Sony STR-AN1000 B JBL MA9100HP
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?
JBL MA9100HP is ahead, but on only 1 of the measured areas, and it costs about 53% more. That is a lot of money for a narrow margin - Sony STR-AN1000 is the sensible buy unless a specific feature above decides it for you. If you play records, JBL MA9100HP saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely. Think about the whole system: the roughly $612 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.