Hey guys, I ordered from batch 1 of these little miners. Shipping was a little delayed but that wasn't due to Braiins, it was shipped from them December 13th but got held up in the hand over from DHL to our local shipping company here in my country. Finally got it yesterday and have it up and running now so here's a few thoughts on it
Packaging/UnboxingPackaging was great, the box for the miner came in a sturdy cardboard shipping box packed with freight air bags to make sure it didn't rattle around during transit
The miner box itself while simple was also quite nice, upon opening it has everything needed to start including the power brick and power cable. Keep in mind they didn't have the power cable to suit my region but it's just a standard C13 power plug that goes into the power brick so I had plenty of them laying around anyway. They've also included a bunch of stickers as well which while totally unnecessary is pretty cool regardless
Setup/RunningPlugging in the unit on first boot the fan seems to run at full speed. At first though I was a bit uneasy thinking this was the fans normal operating speed but seems it just defaults to max speed on boot. Once everything is set up (very easy to do via the included QR code) over either WiFi or ethernet the unit becomes totally inaudible under stock settings. Stock power draw is around 30-34W for 1TH/s, now while it's definitely not the most efficient miner out there, especially given the price, it is a nice bit of kit
Dashboard/ConfigurationThe dashboard itself is quite nice, gives all the info you need at a glance including hash rate, power usage, accepted/rejected shares and temperatures. Keep in mind I'm pointing this device to my local solo pool hosted on my FutureBit Apollo II, I don't think a device with 1TH is suitable for anything other than solo mining.
The highlight and honestly selling point (for me) of the unit is the front LCD screen which can display quite a lot of information including current time, hash rate, BTC price, difficulty stats, fee stats, block height, etc. It's something really nice to look at and reference while it's on my desk and honestly the device itself wouldn't look out of place on something like an entertainment unit and I'm sure would become a conversation piece. There's currently 6 different display cards you can choose from (they recently added the 6th with the latest firmware update) so there's definitely something to suit your liking between them all
Now gets into the settings I haven't yet played around with because I haven't had the time but it seems like there's quite a lot of scope for tinkering and adjusting both hash rate and fan speeds. The auto tuning to a power target looks especially interesting for me and I'll likely try it out in the coming days
ConclusionI like this device! At $299USD, sure, the price to performance ratio isn't there but it is a seemingly solid bit of kit with some very nice features. The silent running is appreciated and the LCD screen that shows a whole range of stats is the selling point for me. I'd like to add, dealing with Braiins themself has been an absolutely awesome experience. When I ordered the device, I forgot to input a code to save 10% thinking I'd lost my chance to use it I messaged them anyway after the order and the responded with no problem, give us a BTC address and we will refund you the 10%; it went straight in after that! They were also very helpful with the issues in shipping even though it was totally out of their hands and their response time was fantastic.
If there's any questions any of you have, I'd be happy to answer them and hope this little write up has helped someone in some way!
