Canaan's Avalon A1566 needs electricity at 5.257p per kWh to cover its own power and nothing else. The cheapest half-hour on Octopus Agile in Eastern England today was 32.50p. No tariff a British buyer can sign makes this machine pay, and the rest of the review is about how far away it is.
Bitcoin's difficulty is 148.4 trillion, implying 1,062 EH/s. The last 144 blocks paid about 3.1459 BTC each including fees, which at £55,238 is 2.3326p per terahash per day net of a one per cent pool fee. The 185 TH/s bin grosses £4.32 a day and draws 82.08 kWh to do it. Divide one by the other and you get 5.257p.
Ofgem's cap to 31 December 2026 sets the unit rate at 26.32p, 5.01 times breakeven, losing £17.29 a day per machine. Agile had published 46 of its 48 half-hours when we looked: cheapest 32.50p at 10.30pm, median 55.795p, peak 78.99p. None of the 46 came in below 5.257p.
The machine itself
The machine is rated 185 TH/s at 3,420 W, which is 18.49 J/TH. Hashrate Index bench-tested one in 2024 and measured 187 TH/s at 3,420 to 3,460 W, so it over-delivers hash rate and lands inside its power spec — the one reassuring data point here. It is air-cooled, 75 dB, and dumps 3.42 kW of heat.
It is single-phase, taking 220 to 277 V, so the three-phase objection that disqualifies machines like the S23 XP Hydro does not apply. Current does. At 230 V the nameplate draws 14.87 A against a thirteen-amp socket's ceiling of about 2,990 W, so it exceeds a domestic plug by roughly 430 W and wants a dedicated 20 or 32 amp radial with a commando outlet, fitted by an electrician.
Canaan's 360-day warranty covers only the original purchaser, and Canaan no longer sells this machine.
Price, warranty, and who carries the risk
Canaan's shop listed no air-cooled A1566 when we last reached it; there the name now means the hydro A1566HA. Every unit a buyer can get is from a reseller, which matters because the warranty we recorded “only applies to the original purchaser who purchased the machine directly from CANAAN” and “after resale, the reseller takes on warranty responsibility”. We could not re-reach Canaan today to check either sentence, so treat both as recorded rather than confirmed. Either way you hold a reseller's promise, and there is no UK service centre.
Asking prices for a new, sealed unit run from $1,170 to $3,000, or £872 to £2,236, which is $6.32 to $16.22 per terahash. That 2.6-times spread is itself the warning: the cheap end is ex-VAT from Chinese sellers with no UK recourse, the expensive end delivered duty paid. Importing one attracts no customs duty but 20 per cent import VAT, which a business reclaims and a hobbyist does not.
It loses to its maker's current stock too. The A15Pro-221T was listed at $1,944.80, about £1,450, for $8.80 per terahash and a breakeven of 5.866p; an Antminer S21 at 188 TH/s was listed at $1,111, about £828, which is cheaper outright, cheaper per terahash and more efficient at 5.554p. That last comparison guts the one bull point available: on the figures above the A1566 is not even the cheapest route to 185 TH/s. What survives is that the nameplate held up under a bench test, it clears the single-phase hurdle, and difficulty eases 6.65 per cent on 13 November. The bear case is everything else. At UK retail power it loses money in every half-hour of every tariff we found, and a fifth of the cap rate is merely where it stops losing on power, before hosting, downtime or depreciation — so it needs hosting well under that, by which point you would rather buy a generation newer.
| Hashrate and power, 185T air bin | 185 TH/s ±5%, 3,420 W ±10% |
| Efficiency | 18.49 J/TH rated; 18.4–18.5 measured |
| Supply | 220–277 V single-phase, 14.87 A at 230 V |
| Hashprice, gross revenue | 2.3326p per TH per day; £4.32, 82.08 kWh |
| Breakeven electricity | 5.257p per kWh |
| Ofgem cap to 31 Dec 2026 | 26.32p per kWh |
| Agile half-hours below breakeven | 0 of 46 published |
| Revenue per installed MW | £1,262 a day |
| Price, new | $1,170–$3,000; $6.32–$16.22/TH |
Difficulty and the 144-block reward including fees from mempool.space, with network hashrate derived from difficulty rather than its reported figure, which stood at 967 EH/s on the same call; bitcoin price in sterling from CoinGecko; sterling-dollar from the European Central Bank via Frankfurter, quoted 9 November. Specifications from Hashrate Index's bench test; prices from six resellers. Network and tariff data retrieved 10 November 2026, 11:38 UTC; the rest on 9 November. Electricity is Octopus Agile, Eastern England, 46 of 48 half-hourly rates published for today — that region and that day only. Ofgem's 26.32p is the typical direct debit unit rate for the cap period to 31 December 2026 and is a national average, not an Eastern England figure; VAT is removed from electricity to 31 March 2027 and Octopus returns identical exclusive and inclusive values on all 46 records, so no uplift applies above. Prices are the 185 TH/s air-cooled bin, ex-VAT except the $3,000. Unverified: Canaan's site returned 403 on every attempt, so no first-party specification sheet could be obtained, phase is not printed by Canaan, the quoted warranty sentences could not be re-reached today, and the 194 and 207 TH/s bins have no corroborating sheet. The $1,170 low end comes from an aggregator rather than a listing we could open today, and the bull case depends on it. Revenue is gross of hosting, downtime and depreciation. Not a recommendation and not a forecast.