One is a streaming all-in-one and the other is an amplifier. Judge them on how many boxes you want and what you already own, not on the spec sheet alone.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | A | Yamaha R-N800A has more power - 100W against 60W into 8 ohms. That is about 2.2dB, so it plays usefully louder before it runs out and has more in hand on peaks. |
| Built-in DAC | evenly matched | Both have a DAC on board with much the same capability. |
| Streaming | evenly matched | Only Yamaha R-N800A has AirPlay 2. Neither list is longer in a way that matters - check the one service you actually pay for. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Cambridge Audio CXA61 takes more analogue sources - 5 against 3. |
| Phono stage | depends | Yamaha R-N800A 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. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Price | B | Cambridge Audio CXA61 costs less - $1,099 against $1,400 at list. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Yamaha R-N800A 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 Yamaha R-N800A 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?
The usual trade-off: Yamaha R-N800A measures better, Cambridge Audio CXA61 costs about 22% less. With most speakers in most rooms that gap is smaller in practice than it looks here. Start with the room. In a large or open-plan room, or with speakers that are hard to drive - low sensitivity, or an impedance that dips - Yamaha R-N800A has the headroom, and headroom is what stops an amplifier hardening up on peaks. At desk distance or in a small room, 60 watts is already more than most people ever use, and the extra 40 watts would be headroom you pay for and never hear. If you play records, Yamaha R-N800A 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.