You can't control whether you hit a block. You can control what it costs to keep the lights on. On that one number, the Nexus S1 isn't just ahead — it laps the lineup.
Every home-miner ad screams about hashrate. More TH/s, bigger number, more "power." But ask anyone who's actually run one for a few months what they obsess over, and it's not the hashrate — it's the electricity bill. Because that's the part you pay every single month, win or lose.
The honest math of solo mining is that hitting a block is a lottery (more on that below). So the smart question isn't "which miner hashes hardest?" — it's "which one gives me the most hashing for the least power?" That number has a name: efficiency, measured in joules per terahash (J/TH). Lower is better. And here's where every miner we carry actually lands:
Efficiency by miner — joules per terahash (lower = cheaper to run)
That's not a small gap. The Nexus S1 sips 10.0 J/TH. The least efficient miner here pulls 23.3 J/TH — meaning it burns more than twice the power for every unit of work it does. The ad that said "twice as efficient"? It's not a slogan. It's the spec sheet.
The S1 costs about $13 a year, per terahash, to run. The least-efficient miner in the lineup costs about $31. Same hashing — less than half the bill.
What that actually does to your power bill
Run the numbers at a typical U.S. rate (~$0.15/kWh), 24/7, for a year:
Crucially, the S1 isn't winning on efficiency by hashing less. It's putting out a full 10 TH/s — more than most of the lineup — while drawing only 100 watts and staying quiet enough to live on a desk. That combination, lots of hashing for little power, is the whole reason it tops the efficiency chart instead of just being a low-power toy.
Efficiency is not the same as profit. Solo-mining a Bitcoin block on any home miner is a long-shot lottery — most months you'll mine nothing, and even the S1's expected earnings don't cover its power on their own. We say that plainly. But if you're going to run a miner 24/7 for the fun and the long shot, efficiency is the one lever that decides how much that hobby quietly costs you. On that lever, the S1 wins — and it's the bill you'll actually pay, every month, block or no block.
So who's it for?
If you want the cheapest entry ticket, that's the little Bitaxe at $79 — fewer terahash, lowest sticker. If you want the best hashing-per-dollar-of-electricity — the most miner you can run without the power bill noticing — the Nexus S1 is the pick, and the numbers above are why. Twice the efficiency. Half the running cost per terahash. No hype required.
See your real odds + running cost on the Nexus S1
We'll run the actual numbers at your power rate — honest, no inflated earnings.
View the Nexus S1 →