Two types of surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) with the same physical dimensions but different stator core materials are comparatively analyzed, prototyped, and tested in this paper. In order to quantify the magnetization and loss characteristics of the stacked amorphous metal (AM) stator core, an experiment is conducted under different supply frequencies. Based on the data, the no-load iron losses, harmonic losses generated by the inverter-induced non-sinusoidal current harmonics, and the $d$ -axis and $q$ -axis inductances of two types of motors are comparatively analyzed by the finite-element method under different conditions and verified by experiments carried out on the two types of PMSM prototypes. The results illustrate that the AM PMSM has a characteristic of extremely low no-load iron losses, relative to the conventional silicon steel PMSM.