Different price classes - Denon PMA-1700NE costs roughly 6x what Yamaha A-S301 does. Expect it to lead on paper; the question is whether you will hear the difference through the speakers you own.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | evenly matched | Effectively the same output - 60W against 70W into 8 ohms is under 1dB, which is not an audible difference in loudness. |
| Room size | depends | We rate Yamaha A-S301 the better fit for desk or near-field listening and a small room, and Denon PMA-1700NE for a mid-size room, a large room and a very large room. Match the amplifier to the room you actually have, not the one you want. |
| Grip on hard loads | B | Denon PMA-1700NE holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output nearly doubles to 140W, where the other barely increases. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | B | Denon PMA-1700NE is the quieter design on paper - 107dB against 99dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | B | Both decode on board. Denon PMA-1700NE goes higher - 384kHz against 192kHz. Very few recordings exist above 192kHz, so treat this as headroom, not as sound quality. |
| Analogue inputs | A | Yamaha A-S301 takes more analogue sources - 6 against 3. |
| Room to grow | A | Only Yamaha A-S301 offers preamp outputs - which decides whether you can add a subwoofer or a power amplifier later without replacing the box. |
| Price | A | Yamaha A-S301 costs less - $350 against $2,099 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Yamaha A-S301 is the cheaper watt - about $6 per watt against $30. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Yamaha A-S301 B Denon PMA-1700NE
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. If your speakers are a difficult load - 4 ohms nominal, big woofers, or a sensitivity in the low 80s - Denon PMA-1700NE is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. Think about the whole system: the roughly $1,749 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.