The Power1401 is faster, and has more instrumentation ports than the Micro

The Micro has the facilities and the speed that most users need, most of the time

The Power processor is typically some 3x faster and the base memory is 32x larger, enabling more complex on-line analysis, seen for example in spike shape recognition, where the both the number of channels and the number of templates can be increased, with much faster shape matching

The Power can manage 32 spike shape channels, the Micro 16.

The Micro memory can be expanded from 1 to 2 MB; the Power memory from 32 to 256 MB

More memory stores bigger output waveforms and allows longer sweeps  of captured data

The number of ports on both models can be considerably expanded, and for very large numbers of signals, several 1401s can be synchronised to each other, or to an external source

Waveform capture is comparably fast on both. The Micro, multi-channel, can run at 500 kHz, the Power at 625 kHz

The Power can have programmable gain for its waveform input and output. The Power1401 has 16 waveform input ports, compared with 4 waveform inputs on an un-expanded Micro

There is an option of programmable gain on all 16 inputs. There are 4 waveform outputs at 16 bit resolution on the Power 1401 and 2 at 12 bits on the Micro. The Power waveform outputs may be increased to 8 with an optional expansion unit

The Micro1401 is physically smaller, and somewhat lower in cost than the Power1401